F***ing Robots!
When the end comes, no-one can say we didn't warn them.
From deep underground in the safe embrace of the Ministry Bunker and Castratorium I report news that quisling scientists at Cornell have created simple robots that can replicate themselves. Just what we need. It's like giving your teenaged son out the door with $500, a suitcase of beer, a rented Corvette, the number of an escort service, and a .45 loaded with hollowpoints. You just watch what happens, humankind.
(Thanks to boing boing, who are watching the robots too.)
Boing boing also point out a story about an experimental robot that walks on pointe like a ballerina. Expected applications are for people who have lost a leg or both legs, and for modifying humans to fight on equal footing with the robot enemy that will one day walk among us. To defeat them, we must become a little like them.
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That's a fact. In the short
That's a fact. In the short term, working on self-repairing, self-replicating robots is a stunningly good idea.
One step closer to the grey
One step closer to the grey goo scenario, where uncontrolled nano-replicators convert the earth (and incidently, us) into replicas of themselves.
J,
J,
What a really, astonishingly good idea. For now.
In industry, say: your minebot is damaged 1,000ft underground, or under the sea for that matter. Instead of hauling it up and having surly union techs repair it, it could repair itself. You'd still have to pay the union guys for being there in the first place, but it would spare the attitude.
Or in battle: some jihadi tags an Amurrican warbot with a RPG. Instead of crapping out and turning circles, the bot could repair its own track, or limb, or frame, given the materials at hand. As long as the "brain" is working, and current is flowing, it'll keep going.
Of course, the obvious downside is when they decide that humans are better utilized in the mines than the minebots are; then comes Ragnarok, the tungsten-alloyed grip, and the welcoming of our self-replicating overlords.
But however lonely it might be in the Catastratorium (and irritating- as the last group of free humans on Earth, we'll have had quite enough of each other by about day 3, I suppose) at least we'll have sourdough.