Robots

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People create smart robots, which turn against us and take over the world.

Hans Moravec, one of the founders of the robotics department of Carnegie Mellon University, predicts that by 2050, machines will match human intelligence with the ability to abstract and generalizes, and perhaps human consciousness. Not only will these robots look after us in the home, but they will also carry out complex tasks that currently require human input, such as diagnosing illness and recommending a therapy or cure.

The concern that robots might displace or compete with humans is common. In his “I, Robot” series, Isaac Asimov created the Three Laws of Robotics in a literary attempt to control the competition of robots with humans:

  • A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
  • A robot must obey the orders given to it by the human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
  • A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

 

Unfortunately the issue may be not so simple to resolve. Asimov himself based the plots of several novels and short stories on probing into the applicability and sufficiency of the Three Laws. The laws or rules that could or must apply to robots or other "autonomous capital" in cooperation or competition with humans have spurred investigation of macro-economics of this competition, notably by Alessandro Acquisti building on much older work by John von Neumann.

Even without overt malicious programming, robots and humans simply do not have the same body tolerances or awareness, leading to accidents: In Jackson, Michigan on July 21, 1984, a factory robot crushed a worker against a safety bar in apparently the first robot-related death in the United States. Since then, laser light curtains have been required to protect against such dangers from heavy equipment

Marvin Minsky, an artificial-intelligence expert at MIT, envisions an eventual symbiotic relationship between human and machine, with the two merging into "postbiologicals" or cyborg creatures, capable of vastly expanding their intellectual and mechanical power. By uploading ourselves into advanced robots, we will be even capable of immortality.

Nanotechnology is even more threatening. In a few decades, it should be possible to build microscopic robots that can assemble and replicate themselves. They might perform surgery from inside a patient, build any desired product from simple raw materials, or explore other worlds. They could also escape man control and proliferate like a virus, and reduce the biosphere to dust in a matter of days, putting an end on Man reign on Earth. This phenomenon is know as Grey Goo
 

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