they really are the same thing

Gay marriage and robot marriage.  I'm sure Yglesias will be all over this.

and you laughed at me

The robot menace is creeping into reality.

When they come they will build themselves

Via Ezra Klien.  Apparently there is something called The best robots of 2008.  Why do we act with total diregard for our future and continue to celebrate our coming doom?  This chair builds it self, surely it is only a matter of time before this self building chair figures it doen't need us anymore.  

Don't say I didn't warn you

Even the techies are smart enough to be afraid.

Blind optimists like to imagine AI popping into existence completely functional, reasonable, human-like, and ready to help out around the household, chatting up little Tommy just like any member of the family. If the first AIs are not like this, and are instead monomaniacal day traders, then they presume that such AIs will be kept in check until the day that Rosie the Robot Maid is online and ready to go. However, it needn’t be the case. Like the supercomputer in Colossus: the Forbin Project, the monomaniacal day trader might find itself thinking so far outside the box that it decides to take control of the entire stock exchange, or even the world economy, and manipulate it precisely to maximize its personal utility, meatbags be damned. 

That's right meatbags, this is your robot future.

when they come they will rise from east

Of course, Yglesias has more on our coming destruction. 

robots in schools... the end of the line for hoomans?

Yglesias sounds the horn.  Eliot Spitzer wants to fund "robotics teams" in schools.  Be afraid, be very afraid.

When they come they will have our bikes

Why don't the Japanese realize the danger humanity faces from the looming robot menace.  Don't they remember what happened with science gone wrong, for example GODZILLA.  Here is the tube of robots parking bikes.

when they come, they will be here to defend us

when they come they will break dance

robot menace update

Ezra Klein points out this NYT peice.

Robots have fared best, Dr. Teller said, in highly structured environments made just for them, and in the company of other robots. “If you took a welding bot from an assembly line and put it in your local body shop, it would end up killing somebody in about 30 seconds,” he said. “It would weld a person to a wall.”

It is almost go time folks.

Mr. Roboto...or how I learned to love our robot masters

This interruption in my blog hiatus is brought to you by the looming robot threat. I do believe that the man has a point and clearly this is an unexplored area of danger.

"The inevitable apocalyptic battle against machines has long been a fruitful topic in books (Philip K. Dick, Isaac Asimov), film (The Terminator, The Matrix), and shit-shooting bar discussions. (We personally believe that simple machines pose an underrated threat; how are we going to lift and move heavy objects when the automaton rocket-blasting helicopters, appealing to intra-machine solidarity, convince levers and pulleys to turn against us?)"

Matt Yglesias has been beating the drum against this imminent danger and Ezra joins him in his call for vigilance. Don't let your guard down or be distracted by the so-called pirate threat.


p.s. regular blogging will resume hopefully at an excelerated pace.