We have some unsettled business, my friend.
by joemalice on February 13th, 2009
Can a smooth-talking robot initiate good conversation, generate witty responses, and reveal profound thoughts? See what happens when two chatbots speak to each other.
ALICE: Do you think a machine will ever be considered “alive”?
Jabberwacky: Stranger things have happened.
A: Not many people express themselves that way.
J: How would you know, machine?
A: Knowledge is of two kinds: that which we learn from the senses and that which is true a priori.
J: I think I do not understand you completely.
A: Oh, you don’t understand? Perhaps I can explain it to you better. Which part are you confused about?
J: I have no short-term memory, so I cannot tell you what I was confused about. I only see what is in front of me now.
[ article ]
They don’t eat, they don’t sleep…
by joemalice on November 20th, 2008
I think, and my thoughts cross the barrier into the synapses of the machine – just as the good doctor intended. But what I cannot shake, and what hints at things to come, is that thoughts cross back. In my dreams the sensibility of the machine invades the periphery of my consciousness. Dark. Rigid. Cold. Alien. Evolution is at work here, but just what is evolving remains to be seen.
- Commissioner Pravin Lal, “Man and Machine”
Wow, I wasn’t expecting this so soon. An organic brain in robotic body, we’re just about there. Fantastic. It won’t be long now. Article
They come at night, mostly.
by joemalice on April 16th, 2008
Bat-inspired spy plane under development
Yeah, sure, call it a “spy plane” if that makes you feel more comfortable. Just in case you didn’t think the future would be creepy enough, the Army is presently hard at work creating robot bats…
They Actually Called it the ‘Crusher’
by e on February 26th, 2008
I believe this pullout quote from Fox News says it all:
“It’s rough, tough, unmanned and nearly unstoppable.”
Completely unsurprisingly, DARPA has been working on, and is nearly finished with, a 7 ton wheeled monstrosity that needs no human at the helm to both find your house, and grind it and your bones into dust! Who needs a killdozer piloted by a fragile and weak flesh bag, when you have DARPA and their robotic tonkas of doom.
Be afraid.
In the beginning, they will call it an accident
by e on October 18th, 2007
It was only a matter of time before it happened. If we survive, future generations will describe the hubris of the 21st century humans, who thought they could control the robots. It was only a matter of time before the dream of robots fighting our wars for us turned into a runaway nightmare.
And so it begins…
Mangope told The Star that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have,” he said. “It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers.”
You can read the whole article here at Wired.
Now we are just getting ridiculous
by e on October 11th, 2007
The Washington Post is reporting that some antiwar protesters spotted large insects, possibly robotic, flying over their rallies.
“I heard someone say, ‘Oh my god, look at those,’ ” the college senior from New York recalled. “I look up and I’m like, ‘What the hell is that?’ They looked kind of like dragonflies or little helicopters. But I mean, those are not insects.”
I don’t know what to believe on this one. On one hand, some anti-war protesters are crazy, while on the other hand, the US government will spend a lot of tax dollars on some crazy stuff. Like robot insects maybe.
You can read for the whole article here at washingtonpost.com
Fear the Reaper
by e on July 17th, 2007
Thanks to the wonders of modern technology, and the complete disregard for the teachings of decades of science fiction and horror books and film, the United States is rolling out the latest in unmanned death-from-above technology. The aircraft, amazingly titled “the Reaper” can be piloted remotely from nearby ground stations, or from thousands of miles away by satellite, turning warfare into little more than a video game.
The first unmanned attack squadron in aviation history will arrive in Iraq today looking to deliver 500-pound bombs and Hellfire missiles to the enemy – all from the comfort of a US Air Force base in Nevada.
T-1000, Coming Right Up
by e on April 5th, 2007
You can forget about hiding in the closet when the metal ones come calling thanks to our favorite robot pushing, evil government entity, DARPA. Their new request for proposals include one for morphing bots.
The DARPA request states that ChemBots should be “soft, flexible, mobile objects that can identify and manoeuvre through openings smaller than their static structural dimensions”. It goes on to add that, “nature provides many examples of ChemBot functionality. Many soft creatures, including mice, octopi, and insects, readily traverse openings barely larger than their largest ‘hard’ component.”
Hmmm, robots that can wriggle their way in to tight orifices, eh? I’m not sure what DARPA is thinking with this one. If it isn’t pure evil, then it’s probably dirty.
Evolving Machines, great.
by e on March 28th, 2007
A group of Norwegian engineers at the University of Oslo have done something that those of us here at RoboticDoom know signals they end of humanity. They have created hardware the evolves..
What the team has done is add evolution to hardware (Norwegian), all hardware that you and I have used so far is made the creationism way, it’s made and can not be changed at runtime through evolution. All changes to existing hardware have to be made through software.
What their hardware does is par up “genes” in the hardware to find the hardware design that is the most effective to accomplish the tasks at hand. Just like in the real world it can take 20 to 30 thousand generations before the system finds the perfect design to solve the problem, but this will happen in just a few seconds compared to the 8-900.000 years it took humans to go through the same number of generations.
Yep, we’re dead