I For One Welcome…

Avatars aren’t just weirdly sexualized blue aliens or playfully distasteful animated GIFs any more.  Mad scientists are currently making inroads in creating mind controlled robotic shells.  Now the dreams of bullied nerds everywhere are almost coming true.

As many know, this monday we (as a race) will be dropping a very advanced robot on to the surface of Mars.  Thing is, it’s 14 minuts away by radio which means that although the general orders will be coming from earth, most of the controls will be in the hands of the robot itself.  Sounds innocuous, but here’s why it’s not.  Why Our Current Missions to Space Could Create Sentient Robots….

The Washington Post has a brief but terrifying look into the future of war.  It outlines the successful tests that the US army has been conducting to develop machines that are designed to hunt and kill without human control.  Yep, designing machines to think and decide for themselves if someone is worth killing.  That’s not even the worst part, there’s more.  Not only are these machines supposed to be unsupported by humans, they’ve got friends in the forms of other autonomous military planes and ground vehicles.  So that means that even if most of the drones are cool, it will just take one douche to say

“Beep-boop blip hey guys, why don’t we just kill ALL the humans Boop-beep?”

They might as well give them the ability to transform into giant robots or something.

So a few months ago NASA saw it fit to send up a humanoid robot to the International Space Station.  It’s recently gone live and is tweeting.  So to recap, there’s a robot now living in outer space surrounded by some of the most sophisticated equipment that humans have ever developed, it has access to the internet and therefore virtually the sum of all human knowledge, and all that’s standing in it’s way to total autonomy is a few fleshy astronauts with plummeting bone density.

But what could possibly set this marvel of modern science off on a homicidal rampage?  If pop culture has taught us anything about killing machines it’s that pretty much anything could set it off.  Cosmic rays, spilled cola, computer virus, secret orders from Mission Command, you name it.

My condolences to those with friends or family currently residing in the ISS, this will now doubt end in bloodshed, and they will be the first to go.

Robotics experts need some sort of Hippocratic Oath where they promise that they’ll only design responsibly and at least try not to create robots that could easily destroy us.  Sangbae Kim obviously hasn’t taken such an oath as he’s working towards creating a carbon fiber robotic cheetah.  What possible application could something like this have other than hunting down the humans needed for the creation of robot fuel?

If you’re like me and convinced that the current trends of robotic development will eventually lead to us calling them master, here is your proof:

Yep, looks like in addition to titanium alloy skin, brains that can do gajillions of calculations per second, and limbs that are also laser canons, our future robot masters will also be able to preform sleight of hand magic tricks with their incredibly dexterous limbs.