Type 1, Type 2 and Type 3 Civilisations

What is a Type 1 Civilization?

A Type 1 civilization is a planetary civilization. All the light that comes from their mother star is absorbed and all sources of energy on their planet are controlled by them such as the changing weather, controlling earthquakes and volcanoes. They would have cities on the ocean. It would also be a multicultural society where everyone is equal and would probably have a lingua franca which is a language that is used to accurately make communication between people who do not share the same first language. For example, in Stars Wars their lingua franca is Basic which is commonly spoken throughout the galaxy. According to theoretical physicist Dr Michio Kaku in the year 2100 humanity will reach a type 1 civilization.

What is a Type 2 Civilization?

A Type 2 civilization is a civilization that is stellar. They are 10 billion times more powerful than a Type 1 civilization. In films such as Star Trek the Federation of Planets is an example of a type 2 civilization. All their energy on their planet has been exhausted and so they harness their energy directly from their motherstar. They absorb all energy that comes from their sun including solar flares and the power of the sun itself to power their colossal machines. This type of civilization is immortal since nothing know to science including ice ages, meteor impacts or even supernovae can destroy it. If their motherstar were to explode this civilization could travel to another star system or change the orbit of their own planet and move it. 

What is a Type 3 Civilization?
You may see a Type 3 civilization in the Galactic Empire of Star Wars or the Borg in Star Trek. This civilization is 10 billion times more powerful than a type 2 civilization and exploits the power an entire galaxy. They control billions of star systems and can utilize the energy of the black hole located at the center of their galaxy. Just like a type 2 civilization this civilization is immortal. 

A Type III Civilization

What type of civilization are we today?
Our civilization today is only Type 0 civilization where we harness the energy from unsustainable sources such as oil,coal, fossil fuels and dead plants. We only utilize a small fraction of the sun's energy that fall into the Earth. However, there are signs that we will reach a type 1 civilization. For example, we have the internet which is the start of a Type 1 Telephone system where we can communicate across the entire planet.  In addition the European Union is revealing the beginning of a Type 1 economy. Furthermore, the number 1 second language on Earth is English. This gives us signs that we are beginning to have a Type 1 language where everybody speaks it. 

We are currently in the transition from a Type 0 to a Type 1 civilization. At this point we are in the danger zone where we could end up destroying ourselves. We have many problems today such as global warming, sectarianism, racism and fundamentalism. It is not clear whether these could  stop the transition from a Type 0 to a Type 1 civilization. This transition is also one of the greatest tests that humanity will face. Can we survive on a planet without destroying it?

Robots of the Future

What is a Robot?
The term robot refers to machines that have the ability to carry out complex task automatically guided by a computer program or electronic circuitry. It can also refer to machines that are operated by remote control. The word robot was first mentioned in 1920 Czech play called RUR (Rossum's Universal Robots) where mechanical slaves rebelled against the human masters. 

A robot as depicted in the film I, Robot

A Robotic Future

Since the start of this century, humanity has made a giant leap in the field of robotics. In the coming decades around 2030, we will see a world sort of like I, Robot, where robots roam the cities alongside people and artificial intelligence is widespread across the globe. The promise of artificial intelligence is to give our machines the ability to think analytically.  In this blog we will explore the role the robots will play in our lives tomorrow, the development of  these high-tech machines using advances in computer science, robotics and mathematics and  the challenges involved.

How will robots affect our lives tomorrow?
In the movie I, Robot a super computer called VIKI (Virtual Interactice Kinectic Intelligence) the most advanced robotic system ever made is activated in the year 2035 and is designed to perfectly control the operations of the Chicago Everything in Chicago including the subway system, and the electricity grid which provides the power to thousands of household robots that are featured in the film. 

In tomorrow's world we may see many systems in our cities such as the subway and electricity grid like in I, Robot which are operated by computer's or robots.  This would transform our lives significantly and make it a lot easier. Robots will also have an impact on other aspects of lives, such as transport, medicine and perhaps even our own bodies. 

How far are we in the field of robotics currently?
Today, simple robots that can vacuum carpets in homes are owned by many people. There are also many collaborative robots being widely used in industries and in the military. In the year 2006, it was estimated that there was approximately 950,000 industrial robots and 3,540,000 robots that were working in homes and buildings. A robot currently used in the military is an unmanned aerial vehicle called the predator which is controlled by a human using a joystick. 

However, the robots we have today do not think the way we do or look like the ones in science fiction. They are not intelligent. Even  the most advanced robots such as ASIMO (Advanced Step in Innovative Mobility) designed by Honda which can realistically walk, run, climb stairs, talk, pick up cups and trays, respond to simple commands, and even recognize some faces only has the intelligence of an insect. 

There are still signs though, that we are going towards a future full of intelligent robots. For example,a design called LAGR ( learning applied to ground robots) is being experimented by Yann LeCunn at New York University. This golf-cart sized robot is made to learn everything from scratch, by bumping into objects. The robots has on it two stereo color cameras that scan the landscape, identifying obstacles in its path as it moves among them. It carefully avoid these obstacles and learns with every pass. 

The challenges of developing intelligent robots
The  main challenge of developing robots that can that think and act like us is that computers have not been able to perform two key task that humans perform effortlessly, which are pattern recognition and common sense. 

Pattern Recognition:
Compared to humans robots are much better at seeing things, but they do not understand what they are seeing. When a robot sees something it transforms the image into a mixture of dots. It then processes the dots to recognize an array of lines, circles, squares and rectangles. Afterwards, one by one it tries to match the jumble of lines, circles, squares and rectangles, with the object being stored in its memory. It takes many hours of calculation before the robot will be able to identify the object. However, can recognize object within a fraction of second. 

Common Sense:
Robots are also a lot better at hearing things than humans, yet there do not understand what they hear. 

 What if robots became more intelligent than us?
Many Hollywood movies such as Terminator portray robots trying to take over the world. For example, in Terminator 3 Rise of the Machines the skynet computer virus infects the US military computer and takes over the machines. It then launches a nuclear attack on humanity and begins a war between man and machine. 

As proof of this revolution in robots people have pointed to the military, where the Predator drone as mentioned earlier is a pilotless robotic aircraft which targets terrorists with deadly accuracy in Afghanistan and Pakistan, cars with no drivers, and ASIMO as I said above. So are we very close to building robots that could destroy us? No. Even though, there have been many tremendous breakthroughs in artificial intelligence in the last decade we are still far away from constructing these machines. For example, the predator is controlled by a joystick, the cars the drive themselves do not make independent decisions as they scan the horizon and spin the steering wheel. They have to follow a GPS map that is stored in the memory. Fortunately, this means that the nightmare of fully autonomous, conscious, murderous robots is still far away in the distant future.