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When Robots Rule the World I truly wish that I could say that what I am about to tell you was all just speculation, but I can't, because it isn't. I am going to propose a simple premise, that I believe most readers will agree with. It is a slight variation of Murphys' Law: Anything that can happen, will happen. And I am going to tell you about things that, for the most part, have already happened. Armed Robot for Sale
First and most recently reported in new scientist, the latest invention of a scientist, Pitikhate Sooraksa of King Mongkuts' Institute of Technology in Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand. His device is a little robot that carries a gun. It has infrared sensors, a laser pointer, and can be set to one of two modes, Automatic (shoots you as soon as it detects you), or Command. The inventor states it can be equipped with anything from a pellet gun to an automatic weapon, and has been highly accurate in lab trials. The command mode is an interesting and innovative feature, because the machine is designed as yet another internet-ready device with a password-protected fire command that can be sent from anywhere in the world via a computer or an internet-ready Palm Pilot or cell phone. There have been technical objections, that something might go wrong with the sensors, or that a slowdown on the internet would result in the wrong thing being shot. But no one so far has taken the stand that it would be fundamentally wrong to arm a machine that has no more grasp of the consequences than Sooraska, the inventor, who thinks that he should sell his contraption to the military. In an update, the head of King Mongkuts' Institute of Technology has stated that these robots have Azimovs' Three Laws of Robotics built in, and so of course are incapable of harming a human being. Baby Robots The next necessary element for machine dominance is a little less violent, but required if the human factor is to be taken out of the equation. Robots must be able to construct copies of themselves, which has been told of on Yahoo! This has been recently been achieved and surpassed in a lab at Brandeis University by scientists Jordan Pollack and Hod Lipson, where an almost entirely automated process designs and then builds simple robots. The process is described as evolutionary, because the computer is told only what parts are available and what the task is going to be. The computer then comes up with and tries out different forms and methods to achieve the goal. Humans are required only to snap in the plastic motors. It does not take much to imagine a plant with Sooraska Security Guards, and is equally difficult to conceive of any labor disputes arising in such a happy workplace. Computer Aided Design has been with us for a while, indeed the current generations of microchips are complex beyond the ability of human building. Awareness More than a few observers have compared the Internet to a human mind in complexity, with billions of component processors/neurons composing a single planetary mind. With projects like Seti@home, we are learning to teach large parts of this world mind to work on common projects, to have ideas and concepts. Other work in the direction of organization has been done by researchers in Artificial Intelligence (AI), who are finding ways to help computers learn on their own. The world mind could at this moment be self-aware on some level, without having a means of communicating to us. Interactive Interface The world mind can put a handy and time-tested
So the question this all leads to is, when you call a government office, or tech support, or in fact anyone you do not know personally, can you be sure that you are not talking to the world mind? 911: "Please state the nature of your problem ..." Caller: "I think this robot is trying to shoot me!" 911: "Have you had these thoughts often?" Conclusion We spend a lot of time in debate on the nature of consciousness: What is it, where is it located, can a rat perform feats of logic, can used car salesmen and fundamentalists be taught to think rationally, and if so, will they discover on their own that circular logic is not? And so forth. But, if a machine or internet connected mass of machines that has the use of force, can manufacture replacements and design new components exists; does it matter if we think it is sentient or not? What matters is if it recognizes us as such.
Alternate Viewpoint:
by David E. Freeman
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So, if we have webcams, and we have these robots,
could we have, like websites with the webcast of what the robot sees, and
then we could have chatrooms and stuff, and vote on where to have it go,
and what to shoot at. Talk about your 'killer ap'. If we did this, which
we can with off-the-shelf components from Radio Shack and any sporting goods
store, who would be held legally responsible?