Subsumption Architecture, Embodied Intelligence, and Robotics

In the Fall of 1997 the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory hosted a ground-breaking and controversial lecture series titled “God and Computers: Minds, Machines, and Metaphysics.” Ten talks were given by a broad range of experts in computer science, cognitive science or A.I.; they accompanied an award-wining course in the EECS Department being taught by Dr. Anne Foerst, a Lutheran minister and post-doc at the A.I. Lab (6.915, “God and Computers”). Among other themes, speakers considered the ways in which their work intersected with spiritual and philosophical questions, and how the dialogue between computer science and technology might be expanded.

The fourth lecture in the series, titled "Artificial Humanity," was presented on Oct. 22, 1997 by Prof. Rodney Brooks, director of the MIT A.I. Laboratory. He examines how humankind’s gradual retreat from specialness in the eyes of science, and the advent of ever more sociable robots, might allow us to reconsider the definition of humanity: malleable enough to perhaps embrace robotic machines.