As Randy screams in South Park S09E08, “We didn’t listen!”
In that particular episode, he’s lamenting the damages of global warming, and the lack of interest or care his fellow man had taken to try and stop it. But there is an evermore present danger that the scientists of the world seem to be running at. It’s odd that some very relevant wisdom, in the discussion of science would come from The Bible, but here we are. 1 Corinthians says: Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.
And what CAN we do, that we shouldn’t? Killer robots.
Yeah, that sounds sensationalized, but as a person that has been following closely the news reports of the world’s scientists racing each other to our eventual destruction, there have been some glaring examples recently, that just aren’t getting enough attention.
To take a step back, for a second, the two main concerns with regards to artificial beings are Artificial Intelligence (AI) and indestructible robots of death. Much can be said about the advances and ethical concerns of AI and the singularity, but more terrifying is the recent news out of Boston Dynamics. It seems like every couple of months they release a video of their newest all purpose robot. First they climbed stairs, then we saw them stand up even when kicked and pushed (a wonderful propaganda video for the eventual angry robot consciousness) but then, this:
After months of testing the stability of a robot dog, Boston Dynamics has now made one that they say, “…needs to be good at dealing with ‘disturbances’… and that may sometimes include pesky humans.”
The irony of the article is that when describing the main features of the “dog” like picking things up, and helping around the house, it notes that these are things that “many battlefield robots aren’t designed to do.”
Kinda sounds like they’re bring the battlefield right to our front door.
What do you think?