The Robot Man

According to HansMoravec,universal robots will take over all the physical activities that weengage in,leaving us with little to do.Moravec sees four generations on theroad

to true universalrobots. The first generation will be here by 2010 and will consist offree-ranging robots that can navigate by building an internal mental map oftheir

surroundings.In newsituations they'll be able to adapt,unlike today's mobile industrialrobots.These robots will have the computing power to cope with simple speechand text

recognition,and willbe used for tasks such as domestic clean-ing.

The secondgeneration will arrive around 2020 and will be distinguished by the ability tolearn .Second generation robots are programmed with sets of primitive tasks and

with feedback thatprovide"pleasure"and"pain"stimuli .For example,a collisionprovokes a negative response,a completed task would be positive.

Move forward anotherten years to 2030 and you get to generation three.This robot can build internalsimulations of the world around it. Before beginning a task,it can

imagine what willhappen in order to predict problems.If it has a free moment,it can replay pastexperiences and try variations in order to find a better way of如ing things next

time .It could evenobserve a person or another robot performing a task and learn by imitation.Forthe first time,we have here a robot that can think.

By the time we getto generation four in 2040,Moravec predicts that robots will be able to.matchhuman reasoning and behaviour;generalise abstract ideas from specific

experience;and,conversely,compile detailed plans of action from general commands suchas"earn a living"or "make more robots".

The Moravecmanifesto（宣告）runssomething like this. As robots start to become useful in generation one,they'llbegin to take on many tasks in industry.Driven by the

availability of thischeap and tireless labour force,the economy will boom and the demand for robotswill grow so rapidly that they will soon become lowcost commodity

items.So much sothat they'll move into the home,where the domestic robot will relieve us ofmany chores.

With increasingautomation in generations two and three,the length of the average working daywill plummet,eventually to near zero. Most people will be unemployed as

robots take over notjust primary industry,but the service economy too.Moravec sees the fourthgeneration as an opportunity to surpass our human limitations.

These futuremachines will be our"mind children".Like biological children ofprevious generations,they will embody humanity's best hope for a long-termfuture.

Which of thefollowing statements is true of the future robots?

A.They will relieveus of many chores.

B. They will take overthe information industry.

C. They will neversurpass us.

D. They will becomehigh-cost commodity items.