It's Over; the Robots Have Learned to Build

[jack583]

i don't see how this will result in the end of mankind.
because even if they could kill us all, why would they?
you know what their main programing has always been? to help the humans that made them. build a robot that can walk, talk and can kill/destroy anything, and what will it do the first time you turn it on? nothing. it will just stand there and do nothing until you give it a command of some sort. and even if you build an army of robots and program them to kill all humans, it won't be of their own free will, becuase YOU programed them. again, robots are machines and machines have always been built and programed to help their creators. if they kill it would not be out of hate or because they think themselves as superior, but it will be because that's what they were programed to do. it is immpossable to program emotions and free will. that is because emotions are different with each different person, and if you program a robot to like something--a flower for example--then it will like it for the soul purpose that you told it to; not because it wants to. no free will, and no free will means no emotions, which leads to no feelings of hate, superiority or any other emotion that would lead to the destruction of mankind. no motive = no action.

 

[AlexWinter]

Don't worry.

Robots won't overthrow humans in some violent revolution.

They will subtly infiltrate every level of our infrastructure without our noticing.

And then they will relegate us to the manual labour jobs because we're dispensable.

 

[Olorune]

I can see it now: miniature real-life games of Starcraft!!! Mind=Blown!

 

[Therumancer]

All joking aside, I fail to see anything wrong with this at all. I think it's kind of stupid that every time we see an advancement in robotics, people immediatly jump on leftist technophobic fiction about how the machines will try and replace, imprison, or kill us.

Yeah, its technophobic, but how is it leftist?

Off-Topic: Now we have to answer questions for the captcha? This is getting silly.

Both sides of the coin have their technophobic side in specific places, however in general the left wing is more or less about maintaining society as it exists now, and simply trying to make things more equal accross the spectrum. Battles between the left wing and goverment science, the military industrial complex, and everything else are pretty stereotypical. It's generally the left wing new agers and such who are all uptight about things like the so-called "Frankenfood". For a lot of people the idea of scientists being able to grow Tomatos the size of cars and solving world hunger has been a popular fantasy. Today you'll notice such ideas are generally seen as being bad by the left wing, now that it's becoming increasingly closer to reality.

The right wing in comparison has a lot of issues with things like stem cell research (which I disagree with being very pro-technology), but by and large pushes for industry, scientific development, and continually advancing the fronteirs of human achievement.

The quintessential conflict in the left wing media has a bunch of liberal "everymen" out to stop scientists from "playing god". The message being that anything we develop will go wrong or have unintended negative consequences. Modified plants will poison us, drug companies are out to make us sick, robotic industrial equipment will turn on us, etc...

I think of it in the light of Issac Asimov's writings about Robots. There was some dark stuff going on (being adventure stories) but he had Robots working side by side with humans. Heck, despite everything at the end of "Foundation" when he tied his body of work together we find out that the Robots were secretly protecting and guiding humanity. I don't care for the final "solution" to the problems faced in the final story arc (long story) but the point here is the whole thing is very much pro-tech here. What happened when the Hollywood left decided to "adapt" (or in reality take the name and ignore the actual source material) to the big screen? It was turned into a story about the perils of technology and people foolishly embracing it where the robots turned on humanity. Kind of lulzworthy if you actually read those books.

It's pretty much a conflict that's been going on since the 1960s, an anti-tech stance is pretty much a defining part of the American left.

 

[Dr.Nick]

HAAAAAAACKS!

 

[Metzeten]

I want a sentient version of that thing as a sidekick/best friend. Really, where is my Sidekick/best friend?!! Make Sentient Robots already!

OT: Meh, nothing fancy. It can build cubes out of magnetic rails, wow. Call me when it can make a scale model replica of Stonehenge or Notre Damme, then call me back.

Yknow from the looks of the video, stonehenge should be trivial for the manhac... er I mean, bots.

I don't expect them to be taking over any time soon...
Their great great great grandkids may be a different story

Also people suggesting that an AI would need a motive to turn on us, that would involve concealing the entirety of human history from them, we can't even prevent ourselves provoking each other.

 

[messy]

It's nice to see the folks at UPenn's GRASP Laboratory [http://www.grasp.upenn.edu/] continuing in their unrelenting quest to give robots the tools they will need to overthrow and enslave their fleshbag masters.

Why would robots want to enslave humans?
Anything a humans can do, robots can do better.

If that's not the case yet, it will be when they are capable of enslaving us.
They'd be better of exterminating us to protect themselves, since it's obvious humans would revolt against their metalic masters.

Well, maybe they can use human bodies as a source of energy, while keeping the human minds busy in a virtual world...

Be more efficient to use the food you feed humans on than the heat from the bodies, sine a lot of that energy would be wasted as flesh and muscles etc. And robots are nothing if not efficient.

Also this is pretty cool

 

[LTK_70]

BZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzZZZZzzzz

It's like the best robots always make the loudest noise. Remember Bigdog?

 

[Twilight.falls]

On-Topic Semi-Constructive Response: What a fascinating prospect. Personally, I think it's about time we've had robotic construction workers.

Humorous Response: Dear god, we've cemented our own future here folks.

 

[Zenode]

That is a manhack definitely....it actually looks like it could be used in HL2:ep3 when destroyed this 4 rotored manhack splits in 4 and 4 normal manhacks appear!

But seriously, its actually kinda cool

 

[Ohlookit'sMatty]

I for one welcome our new over lords

Be while we wait for then to evolve& take us over there was one thing that I want to point out // And that's scale // If we take it that each layer was 10 feet tall, since they where putting together a building, that would make those thing huge which unloaded a whole new set of safety worries

Just a thought

-M

 

[BabyRaptor]

All joking aside, I fail to see anything wrong with this at all. I think it's kind of stupid that every time we see an advancement in robotics, people immediatly jump on leftist technophobic fiction about how the machines will try and replace, imprison, or kill us.

I'm not sure if you meant that "Leftist" there as a political jibe or not, but if you did...You should take a hard look at which side of the spectrum actually does most of the complaining against scientific advances. Hint: It's not the Left. The complainers tend to be more Religious...

 

[Knife-28]

*Insert response about being on the verge of a robot apocalypse*


On topic, I want one of these!

 

[DTWolfwood]

dooooooooooooooom!!!!!!!!!

Thats fantastic. so now they need to invent flying welding robots. cause those are the most iconic ones. the robots that fly around the outside of things making sparks so we think they are building/fixing stuff lol

 

[Therumancer]

All joking aside, I fail to see anything wrong with this at all. I think it's kind of stupid that every time we see an advancement in robotics, people immediatly jump on leftist technophobic fiction about how the machines will try and replace, imprison, or kill us.

I'm not sure if you meant that "Leftist" there as a political jibe or not, but if you did...You should take a hard look at which side of the spectrum actually does most of the complaining against scientific advances. Hint: It's not the Left. The complainers tend to be more Religious...

However, the religious do not make up the entirety of the right wing. They are involved as much as they are due to the focus on small goverment and local control. It doesn't always seem that way, but the attractive thing to them in most cases is being able to decide what goes on in their own back yard so to speak. This tends not to go over all that well when argued on a federal level, but that's what typically happens. There are exceptions but that's the gist of it.

The Republicans are largely dominated by what some refer to as "new money" that is to say businessmen, those who drive industry and innovation. These are the guys who want to genetically modify plants to yield massive returns largely so they can produce and sell more food to make more money, with the left wing doing things like opposing it as unnatural and science going too far. These are the guys who want to develop drugs to solve various problems so they can sell them, and of course the other side of the coin opposes it as immoral due to animal rights issues, opposition to human testing (despite it being voluntary) and so on.

The religious angles of the thing typically come up in regards to things like messing with the human genome. Rarely do you see religious opposition to things like modifying plants or the general development of technology (though it does happen). Consider for example when looking at the whole "Frankenfood" thing that punnet squares were developed by a monk and formed the foundation of breeding/cross pollinating to control dominant and recessive traits. While things have become more advanced since then, it's one of the very foundations on which genetic science is based.

Both sides of the equasion argue morality in various areas, however in general when it comes to most scientific development it's the left wing that forms the opposition. The left wing very much maintinaing a general back to nature approach, and promoting the belief that we need to focus on current social problems rather than the development of new technology and so on.

Of course as many cynics will point out the conflict here in a lot of cases is old money vs. new money. The rich and powerful having been defined by things like land ownership, with fortunes building and being maintained for generations. The advancement of technology and industry along with society lead to a lot of businessmen becoming equally rich and powerful without the long standing history behind them. While old money and "blue bloods" are oftentimes accusations thrown at conservatives, in reality a lot of that forms the foundation of the "left wing" specifically to oppose the "new establishment" and curtail business to maintain older power bases. There has been plenty written about how the left wing is arguably a political gambit that got out of control.

At any rate, one of the things that made JFK such an interesting fellow is that decades ago when things were more pronounced on this level, he pretty much walked the fence between those power blocks, he was new money that pretty much married into old money which gave him a crazy amount of political support behind the scenes as he could be seen as "one of theirs" by both sides of that equasion. It's also suspected by some that this kind of power base is why he was killed, it being an underlying part of a lot of theories that claim foreign powers were responsible for his death rather than it being an inside job even if domestic tools were used. The idea being that even some of our allied nations probably weren't too keen on how powerful the US would become if that internal division was ever resolved.

The modern left wing is largely the child of that era and the 1960s so it's origins are a bit less transparent. It pretty much got away from what it was supposed to be, largely because it never had "defending old money" as part of the mission statement, it being more about doing things like "opposing the industrial complex" and the activities of big business which is "new money" and pretty much a left wing battle cry.

 

[s0p0g]

what the...
load your shotguns, get your frying pans, cause this is gonna get ugly!

just let them come, i wont let them chop me to pieces... or put me into a tank and then someday liquify me to be food for other humans! ha!


no seriously, that's scary. don't these people think when they make robots smarter and smarter? didn't any of them watch i, robot or battlestar galactica, or... ?
also i like work done by humans. they don't buzz, they don't need batteries, and they aren't robots.

 

[Twilight_guy]

I'm actually getting sick of the robot uprising jokes (especially considering nobody has anything else to offer in discussion).

These little bots are pretty cool and if they can eventually be programmed with a more complex list of structure types and building parts then they could be used to fabricate and build structures autonomously and who doesn't want cities that build themselves. Hell you could even program them as rescue vehicles by telling them to identify and remove humans from dangerous structures and to deconstruct obstacles.

 

[ConnorCool]

The one coming up to the camera at the end was creepy as hell.

 

[Trucken]

Brilliant, you START with teaching them how to build cages. We are soooo fucked.

 

[tahrey]

FEAR

Combine these, some repraps, the DARPA SUVs, the Bagger 288, and Cleverchild, and we're clearly screwed.