In anticipation of the HBO special feature: The Truth About Killer Robots, our friends at the Daily Beast have just put out an article titled: Robots Are Killing People. How Worried Should We Be?
Quite frankly, this is a brilliant headline. I love the question. Because really, how worried should we be?
Think about it for a second: HOW WORRIED SHOULD WE BE?
Yeah. How worried should we be when we find out that robots have started murdering humans?
Is it a little? Is it a lot? Does it register?
Are we like: ‘It’s just a bunch of robots, killing people. I’m not that worried about stuff like that.’
Are we like: ‘It’s just a bunch of robots, killing people. I don’t know them. I’ll wait and see how this plays out.’
Are we like: ‘It’s robots, killing people. Everyone dies eventually. What’s the big deal.’
Are we like: ‘It’s robots, killing people. When you consider that time flows infinitely in both directions, the length of your life is mathematically equivalent to zero. And even if you find a way to fold time back upon itself, and can skip around here and there throughout the continuum, you still aren’t even a blip. So whatever.’
Are we like: ‘It’s robots. It’s death. And even in you eat well, and exercise and take tons of vitamins and live to be 250, or 1000, you’re still totally irrelevant. You’re going to have to do better than that to get me off the sofa.’
Are we like: ‘It’s robots, killing. Efficiently and without conscience. I saw Jaws when I was a kid, and had nightmares for weeks afterwards. And still can’t swim in open water without picturing getting eaten. I don’t know if this worries me in quite the same way, but I have to admit I have mild concerns.’
Are we like: ‘It’s robots that kill people. I don’t know if that’s better or worse than them putting us into the Matrix. Either way there are pros and cons.’
What’s on your worry scale?
How do you measure levels of worry, anyway? Is there a cool infographic out there to help us out? Is it a 1-10 scale?
Either way, I think there are drugs we can take that get rid of worry. I read about them in Brave New World.
PS. If robots are killing people, we should be worried
I thought I should mention this, just in case it’s not obvious. Killing is worth worrying about.
And this guy that works at Oxford thinks that technology will bring down civilization. But maybe civilization wasn’t all it cracked up to be anyway. Who knows!
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