Robots: 50, Humans: 50

Posted 28 May 2003 at 01:39 UTC by The Swirling Brain

Do you fear the robots? It seems we only have a 50-50 chance against future robots according to Sir Martin Rees and his book Our Final Hour. In fact, there are many that agree that robots will someday get us. I guess such future-shock doomsday scenarios that super robots will wipe out mankind and the fact, as the previous article noted, that chimps may be more human than we thought, we may really be headed to the Planet of the Apes.

I fear that here are some more future shock robot articles: Popular Science: Our Final Hour, IHT: Nanotechnology creates a royal stir in Britain, Village Voice: Gait Watchers, Time: The Dark Side of Science, Tech Central Station: Doomsday Trippers, Calendar Live: Rooting for the robot, Marion Star: Back to the future,

Older Robots.net articles: Tomorrow's War Will be a Robo-War, AI Priests and Killer Robots.

Where's my cut?, posted 28 May 2003 at 01:48 UTC by pauld2 » (Observer)

When I hear that there's this kind of money involved;

"... $50 million project called "Human ID at a Distance," which counts gait surveillance among its primary goals."

I have to ask the question ... where's mine? I have just opened up a brand new line of research that I feel will assist in identifying humans. It is based on the "lines in the tongue." I'm still trying to figure out how to get each person to stick their tongue out, but for a few million or so, this should work.

the human gait ... the tongue ... what's next?

gait surveillance, posted 28 May 2003 at 03:08 UTC by steve » (Master)

Hmmm... it may be time to get out the old Monty Python DVDs and review the Ministry of Silly Walks sketch.

We're all doooomed!, posted 28 May 2003 at 06:24 UTC by motters » (Master)

I bracket all these people into a category which I call "millenial doomsters". There are always people who claim that the end is nigh, and its usually because they're afraid of change or technology.

To the people who say civilisation only has a 50-50 chance of surviving as it is today I would say of course it won't survive. I'm sure that life in 100 years time will be very different from what it is now, just as life in previous centuries was different from today.

The idea of gait recognition has been around for a long time, and it could be revived as the latest in a series of paranoia-driven money spinners for security consultants. There really does seem to be an obsession with technology designed to spy on people at the moment, and I get endless emails from people asking about my face detection programs.

We'll all cohabitate happily together, posted 28 May 2003 at 16:00 UTC by earlwb » (Master)

We'll all be living happily together. In the future we'll all need each other. Somebody has to carry the computer up the stairs. :)

Anyway, it'll be really neat to have computer implants that can let you "visualize" information, without needing an external computer screen. Or do any typing. We'd just silently think about it or subvocalize. Heck even the cell phones and PDA's would all be included. There's a change, no more cell phones. It's all in our heads.

Plus we won't have to worry much about hackers and viruses as they'd be easily tracked by the system. You get caught, you get unplugged.

Of course it does bring up the classic problem with a class society, those with computers and those without.

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