Shaviv
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- Posted: Mon, 07 Nov 2011 22:42:42 +0000
Skynet has three things that modern machines, no matter how advanced, do not: an overall strategy of conquest, an understanding of tactics, and a massive industrial base capable of supporting them.
There is no such thing as a universal fabricator. There are some pretty neat rapid-prototyping machines that could be adapted, to a limited degree, to mass-produce any object you'd care to name.
Yes, we have robots that are heavily armed and network-accessible. But the real threat is not from that network gaining sentience and turning its weapons against us; it is from our fellow human beings hijacking the network and turning its weapons against us.
There's a reason that almost every autonomous or semi-autonomous weapon has a manual override/self-destruct mechanism built into it. We've had too many cases of unexpected situations and random mechanical failures leading to disaster when a weapon fired on a target it wasn't supposed to. (One CWIS turret failed to register IFF signals from a friendly aircraft and fired on it. Another automated weapon, during a demonstration to a crowd, suffered a misfire and partial cookoff, leading it to turn around and fire at the spectators.)
And that is why every piece of powered equipment, whether it is a forklift or a cruise missile, has a Big Red Button(tm) to make it stop doing whatever it's doing, for safety's sake.
There is no such thing as a universal fabricator. There are some pretty neat rapid-prototyping machines that could be adapted, to a limited degree, to mass-produce any object you'd care to name.
Yes, we have robots that are heavily armed and network-accessible. But the real threat is not from that network gaining sentience and turning its weapons against us; it is from our fellow human beings hijacking the network and turning its weapons against us.
There's a reason that almost every autonomous or semi-autonomous weapon has a manual override/self-destruct mechanism built into it. We've had too many cases of unexpected situations and random mechanical failures leading to disaster when a weapon fired on a target it wasn't supposed to. (One CWIS turret failed to register IFF signals from a friendly aircraft and fired on it. Another automated weapon, during a demonstration to a crowd, suffered a misfire and partial cookoff, leading it to turn around and fire at the spectators.)
And that is why every piece of powered equipment, whether it is a forklift or a cruise missile, has a Big Red Button(tm) to make it stop doing whatever it's doing, for safety's sake.
