I for one will not be welcoming our robot overlords
If you haven’t been following what Boston Dynamics is up to lately, it’s time to get shivers down your spine.
TLDR: Skip to 3:41 for wheeled action
Boston Dynamics’ early products were designed in a research partnership with DARPA, aka the US Department of Defence. Google X currently owns them, although they are looking to sell: mainly because developing machine AI is a harder task than software AI, takes longer, and offers a much longer lead time before producing profitable enterprises. While Boston Dynamics’ robots move realistically, they still can’t think for themselves. In all those shots of robots walking around forests and deserts a human is guiding them by radio control.
Guess who has the money for long-term investment?
I’d like to think these guys evolve to delivering pizza and safeguarding kids at the playground, but the realistic part of me knows this technology will inescapably end up with military and policing capabilities (these two are increasingly the same).
How about we combine Boston Dynamics tech with these transparent gel robots from MIT.
Big can be avoided. Big can be managed. What’s really fucking scary is miniaturization.
So, you’re invading a country. Maybe you’re after some dwindling natural resources. Drop ten thousand transparent, waterproof, gel-like robots in the waters of the harbor. Another ten thousand in ponds and lakes. At beach resorts. Program them to pull under and drown any human not wearing the right transmitter.
Follow up with ten thousand of these self-organizing suckers on land.
Arm them with poison. Or tiny tiny scalpels. Or explosives. Just enough to really terrify the populace, disrupt everyday life, and reduce resistance.
Sure, they need to follow a projector’s instructions. For now.
Forget military uses. How about you just deploy them in a city, listening to and recording conversations and digital communications to identify undocumented immigrants. They’re small. They could be anywhere. Hey, disguise them as discarded coke cans. Or Starbucks cups. Better check under the bed at night.
This tech will develop faster than we think. We’re not ready for the consequences of what we can do. Drones and missiles will be the least of our worries.
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Vivian wrote: "How about how people have welcomed spy devices... Echo et al. into their homes."ikr! and a generation of parents taught their kids that digital surveillance is a sign of love
Cameron wasn't a scifi-horror director, he was a visionary.
Steelwhisper wrote: "Cameron wasn't a scifi-horror director, he was a visionary."i feel kind of gutted I won't be around to watch the train wreck right to the end of the century. maybe I should feel grateful, instead
The interesting bit about this is that AI also just now makes leaps and bounds towards self-actuality and independent intelligence. What I find very intriguing is that Cameron invented the whole concept in the early 1980s when neither computers nor robots nor the internet were even suggesting something like what he conceived. Terminator came out in 1984, and now, just 33 years later we are slowly reaching the point where we see the arrival of the first of these creatures, whether the gel bots, the by now independently jumping, running and climbing cheetah or for that matter independently driving cars which just as independently decide whether to kill the passenger or the pedestrian when heading for a crash, or AIs which win poker games, Go and write books.
Oh, and we can always write about this. It is not hard to imagine where this will head.
Steelwhisper wrote: "Oh, and we can always write about this. It is not hard to imagine where this will head."that's how I came across the aquatic robots: research :)
Your examples sounded properly horrific ;)
I wish it were all a little more wild speculation rather than a sound bet :/
The unfortunately sorry fact is that we live in a century of reactionary backswing and will see dark times. Insofar I'm not that sorry to not be around for the nadir of that. Occasionally I would like to be able to allow myself to enter stasis to be woken up in a century, and see what came of it, though.
Steelwhisper wrote: "Occasionally I would like to be able to allow myself to enter stasis to be woken up in a century, and see what came of it, though. "best idea ever. I'll take the stasis pod next to you
Very achievement of humankind can be used for benefit or detriment, as Nobel found out. An ingestible robot could be used to fight disease or kill. We make the choices.
The box has already been opened and those edges will continue to be pushed further... what do we do about it is the important question?