Roboroaches

I am not into cockroaches. Cockroaches are nasty motherfuckers.



Cockroaches are horrible repulsive sick heebly jimbly monsters. They sell hissing cockroaches as pets in little boxes at a pet store down the street from me, and it makes me wonder if cockroaches can learn to love. I don't know if that would make me feel sorry. I think that I could fight a war against cockroaches with conviction, even if they could be passionate or if they could love. I am sure that we would not share any of the same values.

Early in this decade, Hasbro released a line of toys called "B.I.O. Bugs," which I was really down with, despite their serious resemblance to cockroaches jammed through a roboticizer. I was never allowed to have one, because neither of my parents felt so keen about spending fifty dollars on a robot cockroach novelty toy, but I really wanted one. "B.I.O." stands for "Biologically Integrated Organisms." As I understand it, (a limited, limited understaanding) their artificial intelligence is based on sensors all over their body, rather than in a centralized "mind," but the electronic nervous network feeds back to the centralized mind which makes enough sense of it to learn. The little cowboy in the background is Mark Tilden, the roboticist who came up with that system, and a good portion of B.I.O. Bugs themselves:

B.I.O. Bugs can move, make horrible noises, and fight each other-- but what's really unsettling is that they can learn.
Artificial intelligence makes me nervous, because I seriously think that they have to be conscious, at least to some degree. Biological creatures perceive and feel through a chemical reward/punishment system, and some kind of electrical feedback, so it seems hard not to believe that anything capable of learning or problem-solving does not have some amount of perception. I don't mean that A.I.-bearing robots are capable of having thoughts, seeing, or smelling, but I think there's probably some consciousness-a knowledge most likely limited to PLEASURE/DISPLEASURE/IMMEDIATE-GOAL, and whatever senses are built in. I don't really know how to articulate what a robo-psyche would be like, so, maybe you shouldn't take that description too seriously. Just the basic idea. So, maybe, artificial intelligence scares me more than cockroaches and I still have a point. I mean. I don't really think so. Anyhow, B.I.O. Bugs failed massively. Hasbro has disowned any knowledge of their existence, and even the Wikipedia Article has been deleted.

If there's to be a point here at all, I guess I'd like to order myself a B.I.O. Bug off of eBay or somesuch, and if anyone would like to do the same and battle bugs with me, I would really like that.