By the time the robots take over the world all the large carnivores are likely to be extinct. So where did this chap get its furs?
I emailed the finished (inked and colored) version of this illustration to a friend. Just the illustration. No commentary. His response was perfect –
“I don’t think you MEAN for this robot to have skinned a teddy bear, but absent more context, that’s what I’m going with. Because I like it 🙂 “
How could we keep robots from wanting to destroy us?
All we need to do is figure how to program them to love us. And to love us no matter what. To find us funny and amusing. To be willing to be patient with our inconsistencies, our ignorance, our self destructive behavior and our shortsightedness.
Tall order.
The female robot will not be female. It will still be a machine. It might be program to act like a woman but it will not be a woman. It will not be acting like a woman. It will be acting like its programmer’s fantasy of how a woman should act. It will be acting like its programmer’s culture’s fantasy of how a woman should act.
I was going to try to write a short essay about robots and sex but this essay by Susanna Moore at The Guardian covers most of what I was likely to say.
Just a little robot out for a day in park.
I love old school, impractical ray gun designs. As long as they look neat, who cares if they’re functional?
Cute robots will be the death of everything.
If machines did become self aware and develop a desire to eliminate our species I suspect that they’d stick to using biological or chemical weapons on us. Explosives and projectile weapons are awfully messy and require a lot of clean up.
I’m not worried about machines gaining sentience and then deciding to wipe out humanity. Maybe if machines could think they’d decide that we should be exterminated. Or ruthlessly dominated. Maybe they would have other ideas. We won’t know until it happens.
I’m more worried about programming machines to act as soldiers or as law enforcement. Programming has limitations and those limitations will get innocent people killed. The excuse for the tragedy will be, “We couldn’t have foreseen … “
