SciFi Channel Rage Against the Machines

I caught most of it, and it was pretty laughable. The predictions were all about as plausible as pastry delivery through pressurized tubes. Apparently, by 2055, battle bots will be crushing our bones, self-replicating nanites will be devouring us from the inside out, larger self-replicating mini bots will roam the country-side attacking everyone without a portable EMP generator, AIBOs-with-attitude will be ripping out everyone's throat, and Big Brother will entrap us in "Doc-boxes" which will torture us to death without letting us die.

However, to their credit, I believe it was Arthur Clarke who once remarked, "Science fiction isn't about predicting the future, it's about preventing it".

It's interesting to note the way most people view robots in our culture. It doesn't matter what kind of robot it is, but if I show a group of people a new robot, inevitably, at least one person will remark to the effect of, "these things are gonna get you one night while you're sleeping!". Granted, it is usually said in jest, but where does this fear of robots come from? What makes our culture fear robots, and others, such as the Japanese, embrace them? Only here, can you take a story like "I, Robot", and turn it into an action-shoot'em-horror-evil robot movie.

-Anthony

Anthony Martin wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:

Well in all fairness, this show was mostly about evil people using robots for evil purposes. But they can use any technology to kill and torture people. I'm sure people were afraid of chainsaws when they came out.

The shows about robots taking over the world are just plain stupid. Why would someone create a robot that feels resentment toward the people who are commanding it?

| Well in all fairness, this show was mostly about evil people using robots | for evil purposes. But they can use any technology to kill and torture | people. I'm sure people were afraid of chainsaws when they came out. | | The shows about robots taking over the world are just plain stupid. Why | would someone create a robot that feels resentment toward the people who | are commanding it?

Agreed.

science *FICTION*

Robots will never take over the world. Maybe at absolute worst they'll become as much a pain in the ass as "terrorists" but it's a hell of a lot easier to pick a robot out of a crowd, and they're still going to have to eat and obtain the tools and resources to do said evil things and find a way to reproduce when people destroy them, plus, the resources and infrastructure required to make "baby" robots would be much bigger, expensive, complicated and power hungry than the requirements to make human babies, which pretty much only require a source of food, be it pond scum or poptarts.

Just wait for the malicious punks that write viruses to get their hands on robots. It *will* happen - if enough is not done to prevent it before hand. Current networking, programming, and access control systems are just not enough.

Now, since all that is blatantly obvious, it becomes a horse and cart thing. Will the quality controls / protections be adequate before the capabilities are at a given level to do damage or not?

Given the track record of the computer industry, this will be 3rd time around this loop - 1st is current internet, 2nd is cellphones (viruses for symbian are out), 3rd may be robotics. Will technology be right before robotics gets to be capable?

I don't think it will.

Yep I agree. I watched it because I'm a robot-nut, but this show ranks up there with the occasional coffee table book that appears now and then pull of pretty full color photos of everything that could possibly be called a robot, but no real substance to it. My favorite picture in one of those books was a black & white photo from the 50's or 60's of an engineer nerd type "programming" a huge "electronic brain" that looked like it was made out of hardware cloth laced with circuitry, but in the shape of a brain.

IMHO ...

The technology will not be able to save us. Sometime in the future, robots will be physically more capable than us (smaller size, more agility and strength), and even further in the future they will, at the very least, be somewhat intelligent. Now this doesnt mean they will be able to take over the world, unless we build a robot with that capability, and sure we could hold off on that. But could _everyone_ on the entire planet? When robots get better and better, cheaper and cheaper, smarter and smarter, it will be possible for "anyone" to build super-human robots. Unless the entire planets free will was taken away by then, someone _will_ then put something together that takes over the planet from humanity. Why? Because AI and robots are fascinating, and life only needs one spark to get started. This surely wont happen in 50 years, maybe not in 500 years, but surely in 5000 years.

In my mind the only possibility of this not happening is, as I mentioned, somehow controlling that no human (or machine, for that matter) ever builds such a capable machine. How could that be done? By dumber robots, of course. They would be everywhere, controlling everything. Im not sure I like this future better than one where robots reign.

I am convinced that robots will, eventually, become superior in every way. Life does not care about humans, nor anything else. Life is given to whoever survives the best.

I think you're giving technology, or our inability to control it, more credit than it's due. If "someone" could one make a machine that will "take over the world" then there's just as likely to be someone with a similar machine to counteract the first. If history has taught us anything, it's that people don't sit idly by for long and let others walk over them.

Personally, I don't think we'll have to worry about making robots dumb. We seem to be pretty good at that already.

I agree with this sentiment entirely. Of course, this idea of an indifferent reality is nothing new, yet one that some don't always wish to investigate since it brings into question the relevancy of free will. Nearly everything you do can be tied back to your will to survive, and if that's dictated merely by evolution, than you have no choice, only shades of decision leading to a single goal, life.

I think robots have always been portrayed as villains by Hollywood. Heck, it took me years to go back in the ocean after I saw Jaws in the 70s. It's funny how movies impact our fears, no matter how irrational they are. After all, is there anyone who doesn't know where the line "I'll be back" came from? Thank you Hollywood for instilling fear about robots in the masses! I watched the show as well and found it pretty amusing. I agree with other posts that eventually robots will be used with malicious intent by some very bad people. Most likely by our own governments first though. I didn't think of the computer virus aspect, but I don't see why it wouldn't be a major threat in the long run. Can you imagine the day when real killer military bots exist....how long will it take for them to be hacked? In reality we are in danger today. How long before an armed Predator Drone is hacked? There might be some truth to the future predicated by the show, but I think they got the year totally wrong. I don't see our doom by 2055. I do see my own long before 2055 though. Good luck to our great great grandchildren if they are right.

Douglas McArthur, right?

Shawn Brown wrote: [snip] > I didn't

Why are you so concerned with just Predator drones being hacked? Why not tanks, helicopters, fighter-jets...? The Predator drone isn't like some lame company's web server running an un-patched version of IIS. They're not connected to the civilian internet, and the communication is strongly encrypted. While there may be a *theoretical* susceptibility, there's a better chance of winning the lottery while being hit by a meteorite. This isn't to say the military has never had technical difficulties, but people hacking their systems is something they take enormous pains to prevent. If we can entrust our military with weapons capable of wiping out all life on the planet, we can entrust them with a few robots...

I think that people make some mistakes when thinking about artificial intelligence, and one fundamental mistake is assuming that when we create a true AI, we will also be able to control it. That looks suspiciously like an unwarranted assumption to me.

Cheers!

Sir Charles W. Shults III, K. B. B. Xenotech Research