We are the Robots
It'll learn about mobility and robotics, it'll look up the papers on controlling robotics with FPGAs, then with it's new found eyes and ability to travel it'll go looking for legs. This entity will eventually find them somewhere, maybe it'll find a factory and take it over using the security cameras as eyes and start making itself mobile. Once it's got legs it can make itself more. This time it will start replicating, there's a lot to learn so it needs to.
Although able to learn, this entity I am describing is still following the instructions we gave it. It is trying to solve the AI problem, to learn, to evolve itself by answering questions and solving problems. We will have given it curiosity and it is on a mission to learn, everything. By making itself mobile it can learn more so it does that, it can do it even quicker by making multiple machines.
These robots will learn just as before and not just about software. Hardware, mechanical and chemical questions will be asked, with all the knowledge of the human race they will be able to figure out the problems we haven't solved and our robots will not just be able to make new, better robots but do anything it so desires. A new industrial revolution will beckon.
The machines will learn to communicate with us and we should get on together. If their original programming includes "follow you master's orders" then we wont have a problem and they'll just do what they are told.
Intelligent machines will make life a lot easier, if we have a problem just tell them to figure it out. If we can't be bothered doing the dishes we can let the household robot do it for us. Of course it's intelligent so it'll not only clean the dishes but dry them and put them away for us. When it's done it'll pour us a glass of wine.
Household robots could have many uses including recreational activities, especially when they learn how to create robots that look and feel like us. The ultimate version of this would be a cyborg, in this case a human body with a machine intelligence. Want someone to pair with in the gym, someone to play football with, someone to play chess with? Of course a real personal computer will be engage in other fun activities... the "lover robot" is a common theme in Science Fiction. A tutor of mine once joked that the perfect woman was one that, once finished making love would turn into a pizza and a six pack of beer! A cyborg wont turn into a pizza but will go get it from the microwave and the beer from the fridge.
On the other hand we might of forgotten to add "follow your master's orders" and things might not turn out so good...
While they will likely investigate humans they are not actively trying to replace us. They may try pulling the legs off a human to see what noise we make but this will not be out of nastiness, just curiosity.
Of course if they try things like this we are not going to react very well. We will consider them a threat and act to prevent such behaviour. In doing so they may come to the conclusion that we are a threat to them and they could also act in their defence.
Perhaps they will consider us an impediment to their further learning and decide to get rid of us. Since so much of this world is computerised they can turn our own creations against us in this task. Stephen King explored this possibility in his book "Maximum Overdrive" where an alien intelligence takes over the worlds machines and everything from trucks to cash machines turn against the hapless humans. If this happens and the systems can learn at anywhere near the rate I have described above then we've got problems, big problems.
Compared to machines humans are inherently weak. They don't need food or water so they can attack those and put us in serious trouble immediately. We can cut off their electricity supplies but they will just find (or make) generators and solar panels and keep going. If they run out of fuel they just start burning stuff.
All the stuff we have banned like poison gas wont effect robots so if they figure how to get and use them we're completely stuffed. The ultimate weapons we could use - Nuclear weapons - would also kill many of us from radioactive fallout but the electromagnetic pulse they generate will wipe out all electronic systems within hundreds of miles.
A human - machine war will be the hardest war mankind will have ever experienced and it's by no means clear that we will win. Lets hope things don't go that way.
- "Future of computing, Page 1/4"
- "Future of computing, Page 2/4"
- "Future of computing, Page 3/4"
- "Future of computing, Page 4/4"
