“Robots; Mankind’s assistant or Threat to Mankind’s Existence?” From the deranged mind of Thomas L. O’Connor

Before I start this paper regarding a serious matter I would first like to dedicate this paper to Robert Williams who was the first person killed by a robot and hopefully one of the last.

“Robots; Mankind’s assistant or Threat to Mankind’s Existence?”
From the deranged mind of Thomas L. O’Connor

The year is 2029 and thanks to Skynet; the world is in ruins as mankind struggles to fight the robots and their endless mass produced army. Whenever judgment day begins, the bottom line is that robots and super machines cannot be taken lightly and must be considered as valid of a threat as Kathy Griffin to society. Although (for the moment) robots are manmade; with more advancements in artificial intelligence we can potentially lose control of what we made rendering us “the creators” and not “the masters” of this new metal species. Robots have come a long way throughout the 20th century and have made production on a grand scale cost efficient and steady. Long since have the days of the Spinning Jenny have passed where now we have machines that in order to work some douche bag in a union pushes the button and there it is, magic!

As the robots and machinery intelligence grows and begin to operate independently what will happen when a robot watches reruns of “Happy Days” and see the Fonz hitting the jukebox and getting upset at this apparent man-machine hate crime? What’s the robot to do in a world that sees him as a second class citizen just because he isn’t natural? This all plays into the entire movie that was AI which was about a robot child with the capability of loving and having genuine emotions even though the movie went batshit crazy at the end when Spielberg got his hands on it after Kubrick died throwing in aliens and crap, but regardless, great movie dealing with robots living in a human society. Once robots gain complete independent control of themselves and their actions they will have to endure humans and their prejudices. Surly independent robots will not be completely accepted which creates the threat of them turning on men.

A fine example of this threat comes from the film “2001: A Space Odyssey” where HAL, the ships brain controls and regulates all that goes on in the ship, HAL, incapable of making mistakes given his intelligence makes a minor slip and places the crew in question of HAL’s abilities and two crewmembers speak privately of what to do with HAL and speak of shutting HAL down. HAL reading their lips in one of the space pods goes on the defensive killing most of the crew to preserve the Orion’s mission to Jupiter feeling that he is far superior than the crew and they alone are not capable of completing the mission. With superior intelligence, machines can possess the idea that they are better at making decisions than man. They can then shift the balance in their favor under the notion than mankind has made countless errors in the world since the dawn of man and lionize themselves above man feeling a machine in charge would make fewer mistakes than a man ran world.

In the event of this happening what is to stop the machines from taking complete control of everything that goes on deeming humans unfit to rule regardless as to whether or not the machine(s) are incapable of errors? With the creation of such supercomputers/machines man must install a failsafe termination plan to shut down the machines when deemed fit, however in doing so you open the option for a third party to shut down the machines creating slight anarchy pending on how much faith is put into these machines and everything.

The battle of man against machine will be one the machines have the great advantage to in a sense that you can manufacture a machine and send it straight off the assembly line and off to battle whereas us humans must reproduce and wait years before the next wave of human soldiers are set against the machines. The machines will greatly outnumber men tenfold within six months of judgment day. Therefore if we continue the trend of making more intelligent machines and dabble into the field of super intelligent robots we must also venture into methods of a complete global mechanical shutdown that would indeed set mankind back a couple of generations but will ensure the survival of the human race, so long as Kathy Griffen is claimed victim to the machines be it during the war, or as a parlay where we sacrifice her for the entertainment for both man and machine.
Machines will only be as powerful a threat as we make them via what we input into their systems. It is imperative for the creators of this new wave of machines to severely consider limiting its abilities. Do not create a machine capable of anger. Do not create a machine with weaponry. If you desire to go the whole Robocop route, remember Robocop II and the machines created that went haywire and had it not been for the efforts of Robocop Detroit would surely be in shambles…oh wait. To continue on Robocop the provisions placed in his database prohibited him from harming children and a strict conduct of maintaining the law. This proved to be a problem in Robocop II and III where he couldn’t stop the baseball team looting the electronics store, the doucheface kid in II and fighting OCP in III. It was programmed into him that he could not take action against the evil OCP until it was corrected by one of the doctors that built him.

Should such methods to control the machines be in place then it may not be so bad but the threat will remain. It only takes a party, directly or indirectly to tamper with the mainframe of the machines to turn them against us. Yes this may be a farfetched plot from many bad movies like the piece of shit airplane movie and the robot from Mission to Mars with the great Gary Sinise. It may be greatly possible that a severe blow to a robot could short the system, reset it and as in Mission to Mars set the robot into survival mode, as well as in 2001: A Space Odyssey as mentioned earlier.

The grand issue at hand here is not so much how the Robot rising judgment day may occur, but what methods are in place to end it before it begins. Obviously you can not place a halt on production and technological advancement. I feel that the problem will come from Japan when robots are not used for business manners but for personal recreation as servants where they’re in an open environment roaming free amongst us willingly. I must confess that I would love a robot to do my evil bidding, but the robot I want is GIR from Invader Zim and GIR is retarded but loves tacitos! If robots are made for personal usage the sky will be the limit, independent companies will further the advancement of machines and machinist sympathizers will seek to have more emotions placed into the machines which generations feelings of resentment and angst towards men should men treat the machines like women, or something like that. When machines are capable of judgment calls who is to say what is the right call? Suppose one little element is overlooked in programming such as grey areas of culture where some things are tolerable in one culture but punishable in another. For example, in many states you cannot smoke in bars. What if a robot bouncer was created and accidently shipped to western Pennsylvania where smoking is allowed, five minutes into the turning on of Bouncer-bot 6996 a bloodbath would ensue. Judgment calls are a paradox that robots cannot nor should not manage since they are creations without learned morals on top of the programming which is set in stone, do calculators make judgment calls? Hell, even look at chess computers; they are programmed to play the smartest move, what do most of us do when playing chess? Generally make one move that’s off and sit at the computer cursing it out and hitting “undo last move”. If you made a robot to shoot darts, obviously it would be ridiculous with a British accent kicking everyone’s ass which should never even be conjured up given the fact that a FUCKING ROBOT WILL HAVE SHARP OBJECTS. The whole purpose for creating machinery is to achieve perfection and ease of labor. If you believe in God, we are all born with original sin and are indeed not perfect, why would we even try to create a being superior to ourselves that could realize how badass and great they are and decide to take over. TRON!

Man is not like the animal kingdom, we do not have sharp claws or severe strength to survive. Mankind made its way to the top of the food chain via intelligence. We learned to create primitive weapons to hunt for food, we used our intelligence to communicate with each other and operate as a unit, to instill this knowledge into a machine shall indeed be our demise. Heed the warnings from Terminator, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Tron, and that shitty airplane move. Robots and intelligent independent thinking machines are a valid threat to mankind’s survival. Next time you put on G4 and see a robot just think, that robot can and possibly will tear your arms out.