Questões de Concursos UFPR

Ancient dreams of intelligent machines: 3,000 years of robots

The French philosopher René Descartes was reputedly fond of automata: they inspired his view that living things were biological machines that function like clockwork. Less known is a strange story that began to circulate after the philosopher’s death in 1650. This centred on Descartes’s daughter Francine, who died of scarlet fever at the age of five.

According to the tale, a distraught Descartes had a clockwork Francine made: a walking, talking simulacrum. When Queen Christina invited the philosopher to Sweden in 1649, he sailed with the automaton concealed in a casket. Suspicious sailors forced the trunk open; when the mechanical child sat up to greet them, the horrified crew threw it overboard.

The story is probably apocryphal. But it sums up the hopes and fears that have been associated with human-like machines for nearly three millennia. Those who build such devices do so in the hope that they will overcome natural limits – in Descartes’s case, death itself. But this very unnaturalness terrifies and repulses others. In our era of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), those polarized responses persist, with pundits and the public applauding or warning against each advance. Digging into the deep history of intelligent machines, both real and imagined, we see how these attitudes evolved: from fantasies of trusty mechanical helpers to fears that runaway advances in technology might lead to creatures that supersede humanity itself.

(Disponível em: <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05773-y)

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

More Than Just Children's Books

Krumulus, a small bookstore in Germany, has everything a kid could want: parties, readings, concerts, plays, puppet shows, workshops and book clubs.

“I knew it was going to be very difficult to open a bookstore, everyone tells you you're crazy, there will be no future,” says Anna Morlinghaus, Krumulus's founder. Still, she wanted to try. A month before her third son was born, she opened the store in Berlin's Kreuzberg district.

BERLIN — On a recent Saturday afternoon, a hush fell in the bright, airy “reading-aloud” room at Krumulus, a small children's bookstore in Berlin, as Sven Wallrodt, one of the store's employees, stood up to speak. Brandishing a newly published illustrated children's book about the life of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, he looked at the crowd of eager, mo stly school-aged children and their parents. “Welcome to this book presentation”, he said. “If you fall asleep, snore quietly”. Everyone laughed, but no one fell asleep. An hour later, the children followed Wallrodt down to the bookstore's basement workshop, whe re he showed them how Gutenberg fit leaden block letters into a metal plate. Then the children printed their own bookmark using a technique similar to Gutenberg's, everyone was thrilled.

(Disponível em: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/books/berlin-germany-krumulus.html)

Ancient dreams of intelligent machines: 3,000 years of robots

The French philosopher René Descartes was reputedly fond of automata: they inspired his view that living things were biological machines that function like clockwork. Less known is a strange story that began to circulate after the philosopher’s death in 1650. This centred on Descartes’s daughter Francine, who died of scarlet fever at the age of five.

According to the tale, a distraught Descartes had a clockwork Francine made: a walking, talking simulacrum. When Queen Christina invited the philosopher to Sweden in 1649, he sailed with the automaton concealed in a casket. Suspicious sailors forced the trunk open; when the mechanical child sat up to greet them, the horrified crew threw it overboard.

The story is probably apocryphal. But it sums up the hopes and fears that have been associated with human-like machines for nearly three millennia. Those who build such devices do so in the hope that they will overcome natural limits – in Descartes’s case, death itself. But this very unnaturalness terrifies and repulses others. In our era of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence (AI), those polarized responses persist, with pundits and the public applauding or warning against each advance. Digging into the deep history of intelligent machines, both real and imagined, we see how these attitudes evolved: from fantasies of trusty mechanical helpers to fears that runaway advances in technology might lead to creatures that supersede humanity itself.

(Disponível em: <https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-018-05773-y)