Rage against the machines!
Could robots take over the world? In many ways, they already have.
By MIKE MILIARD
May 21, 2008 2:30:12 PM


Massively intelligent artificial brains with no further use for humans. Armies of robotic clones, ever replenishing their ranks. Nimbly mechanized BigDog quadrupeds that can�t be toppled as onward they march. Self-replicating swarms of ecosystem-destroying �gray goo.� Military killing machines with no moral compass built in.

We�re on the cusp of a perilous era. Our pitiful carbon bodies are evolving much slower than the silicon and steel gizmos we�re inventing. And the guys in the lab coats and pocket protectors are starting to worry we�ve opened Pandora�s hard drive.

Technology rules us. All day, every day, we interact with machines. What if they decided, some sunny afternoon, that they no longer wanted to interact with us?

�Open the pod bay doors, HAL.�
Smart robots could indeed stage the big takeover. Many experts think it�s inevitable. And the �technocalypse� won�t necessarily come courtesy of bipedal humanoids wasting us with lasers. It could be more insidious: surpassingly cerebral supercomputers simply deciding they don�t like us, or planet-devouring microtechnology run amok.



Our best hope is to become more like them. To make the great leap forward from human to cyber-enhanced post-human. Only then might the billion-casualty war between Cosmists and Terrans be avoided. (Er, we�ll explain that one later.)

The AP reported a couple months ago that Japan is well on its way �to a future . . . where humans and intelligent robots routinely live side by side and interact socially.� There are more than 370,000 robots employed at factories across that country � nearly 40 percent of the worldwide total. Robots in Japan are �serving as receptionists, vacuuming office corridors, and spoon-feeding the elderly,� the story reported. �With more than a fifth of [Japan�s] population 65 or older, the country is banking on robots to replenish the workforce and care for the elderly.�

Just think of all the time we�ve wasted fretting about climate change and looming recession, nuclear war and bioterrorism. Perhaps we should worry instead about destruction or subjugation at the steely hands of these man-made monsters?

More and more, the innocent subservience of Kraftwerk�s �Die Roboter� � from 1978�s classic The Man-Machine, in which helpful automatons chant �Ja tvoi sluga, Ja tvoi robotnik� (�I�m your slave, I�m your worker�) � seems a wistful relic of the past. These days it�s better summed up by Flight of the Conchords, cavorting in silver cardboard boxes as they cheer the downfall of their meat-puppet masters: �The humans are dead. The humans are dead. We used poisonous gasses. And we poisoned their asses.�

20,000 years of progress
Don�t think it could happen? To understand how quickly and irrevocably we�ve arrived in this grave new world, check out that Kraftwerk video and the clunky �technology� that used to be considered cutting-edge.

Only three decades later, we�ve got iPhones and wireless Web and hi-def TV. And what do you suppose things will look like in another 30 years? Precisely.

Such is the exponential technical growth possible under Moore�s Law � the postulation, put forth by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in 1965, that the number of transistors that can be fit inexpensively onto an integrated circuit is doubling about every two years. It�s a law that�s held true for more than 40 years, and shows no signs of being broken.

Extrapolating from Moore�s Law is Ray Kurzweil, the renowned inventor and futurist � he does most of his mind-bending cogitation at Kurzweil Technologies in North Andover � who sees us fast approaching a technological critical mass.

Describing his own �Law of Accelerating Returns,� Kurzweil writes on his Web site that �we won�t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century � it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today�s rate).� Within a few decades, he maintains, �machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, leading to The Singularity � technological change so rapid and profound it represents a rupture in the fabric of human history. The implications include the merger of biological and nonbiological intelligence, immortal software-based humans, and ultra-high levels of intelligence that expand outward in the universe at the speed of light.�

Is your mind sufficiently blown?

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This is just a fragment of a thought provoking article, check out the rest of it here.

http://thephoenix.com/article_ektid61912.aspx

cool

Ive been telling people in the religion thread about this for months.