• Question: my sister shes older then me and she thinks robots are taking over the world with all the latest gadget is this gonna happen do you think? :)

    Asked by SsaraHh to Áine, Ciarán, Eoin, Lydia, Victoria on 17 Nov 2014.
    • Photo: Ciarán O'Brien

      Ciarán O'Brien answered on 17 Nov 2014:

      She’s half right 🙂

      We are using robots more and more in boring or dangerous jobs, and that can make people unhappy because there are plenty of people who need jobs.

      We also leave a lot of social media in the hands of computer programs that search for different things. Some of them are looking for clues about what you like so they can send you advertising you might find interesting. Others belong to governments paranoid enough about terrorists that they spy on everyone to see if they type things like “i really hate America” more often than most people say it. The rest probably belong to Google as they try and catalogue everything so that search engines will work properly. In that sense, yeah they’re taking over the world.

      But they’re not doing it on purpose. It’s the people that own the robots and social media networks that are taking jobs from some people and spying on everyone. They’re the ones taking over the world. And they’re easy enough to stop. 🙂

      Of course stopping a robot revolution would look awesome. Like the movie Terminator, only less horrible 80’s neon…

    • Photo: Lydia Bach

      Lydia Bach answered on 18 Nov 2014:

      Hey Sarah,

      I think your sisters has a fair point, but the question is still very difficult to answer.
      So right now we know computer power has a huge potential to grow, but there is no real artificial intelligence. Should we manage to create an artificial sentient (with feelings and thoughts) being, then this sort of artificial life form, if attached to the internet would have huge advantages. It could use a huge base of knowledge, would be superior in terms of memory and could probably multi task like no other being could.
      – That artificial life could have more power humans ever had….

      But then that doesn’t mean we would have to be in conflict with it, or that this will definitely happen..

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