They'll Be Back!


Acowlytes! The END IS NIGH! Run for the hills!!! TERMINATORS ARE ALMOST HERE! SkyNet has become self aware and before you can say ‘Hasta la vista baby’, we’ll all be vassals of the Machines!

Yes, this is front page news in this morning’s Melbourne Age. The above breathless gush was headlined as an op ed piece from military futurist Peter W. Singer who speculates that if computers continue to become powerful at the rate that Moore’s Law hypothesizes, by 2030 we will have military robots that carry computing power a billion times their current capabilities.

Of course, a newspaper can’t let it go at that[tippy title=”†”]Because that story is basically: Computer power expands exponentially, so everything that uses computers, including weaponry, will get more powerful. Yawn…[/tippy] Oh, no, no, no! In Newspaper Land science is boring so you have to jazz it up a bit to get the idiots readers interested – that means TERMINATORS! This is what I call ‘Brain-In-a-Jar’ science fiction – the kind of thing that, twenty years from now, will look as goofy as Flash Gordon and 50s images of robots stealing earth women look to us today.

In the article Peter Singer is critical of the Australian Defense Department’s lack of foresight in mentioning robots in a recently released ‘white paper’ outlining Australia’s military strategies for the next couple of decades. You all know how I feel about robots. If they do as well in warfare as they seem to be doing in other areas of deployment, then seriously, we’re well better off without them. Those of you whose skulls aren’t crushed under the treads of the machines in the imminent Northern Hemisphere robot wars can come live here when it’s all over.

Crap


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†Because that story is basically: Computer power expands exponentially, so everything that uses computers, including weaponry, will get more powerful. Yawn…

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