Kids Meet Friendly Robots at Museum

Jor-el, the garrulous robot host at the California Museum of Science and Industry, caught the suspicious eye of visiting Jason Severance, age 11.

“He looks like Freddie (the killer) in ‘Nightmare on Elm Street,’ ” Severance said of the metallic skeleton.

Coincidentally, perhaps, Jor-el’s message at the opening of the “The Age of Intelligence Machines” exhibition was that humans have nothing to fear from artificially intelligent machines.

“No robot can tie shoelaces,” came the sound from a nearby speaker as Jor-el jaw-synched the words. “No robot can understand as much language as a 3-year-old.”

In Acting Roles

Robots have, however, smoothly entered the acting profession, and one luminary on hand was No. 5, the bucket-of-bolts star of the movie “Short Circuit.” But rather than discuss his career, No. 5 stood aloof in one corner and refused to answer reporters’ questions, possibly because his robot agent was nowhere to be found.

While there are also robots among us who are assembly line workers, lab technicians and candy packers, one theme of the show was that machine substitutes can “preserve jobs by increasing efficiency.”

Robophobes could also take comfort from the estimate that a computer with the intelligence of the average human brain would require a 100-story building the size of Texas.

(Or that the robot songwriter at the exhibition suffered a breakdown about one hour after the exhibition opened.)

Long Way to Go

“The robots of today haven’t fulfilled the dreams that people had in the past--vacuuming robots and all that,” said exhibit technician Tom Nielsen. “And it may be they never will. The human machine is so complex and mystifying that it’s far more versatile and functional than a robot.”

The exhibition, created by the Boston Museum of Science, is open free of charge daily until Sept. 5. Blissfully unaware of cosmic questions, the assemblage of mostly school-age children seemed delighted with such participatory features as:

- A sort of playpen for robots, whose inhabitants can be moved about by visitors via remote control.

- A patch of robotic skin that, when poked, prompts such responses as, “What are you, a woodpecker?” Robotic skin, Nielsen said, is needed to give the machines “a sense of touch” if, for instance, they must select an object to pick up.

- A television-set exhibit, “This Robot Sees Only Moving Objects,” in which viewers can see themselves on the screen only when they’re moving. “Stand still and watch yourself disappear,” one mother asked her young son. But he couldn’t stand still long enough.

The show also featured several satirical assemblage pieces of “robot art” by creator Al Honig.

The base of “Mr. Machine,” a colorful, 3-foot-high work, was, in its previous life, an anesthesia cart used in a hospital.

Asked what he added, Honig answered:

“A couple of lanterns, a vacuum cleaner part, a bicycle chain that works, curb feelers, streamers on the handle bars, (size 6 1/2) shoe stays, plaster teeth, an ash tray, a car light, carburetors, chrome, a microphone stand, an aerial, altitude gauges, an X-ray tube in back of a soap dispenser, and wheels.”

“Mr. Machine” is capable of movement, under one condition.

“You have to push it,” Honig said.