Oookay, so I’m shutting my laptop down after this and going to the bunker. You should get a bunker.
Wait, I don’t have one. Okay, so I’m shutting my laptop down after this and going to buy a shovel to make me a bunker and then I’m going to stay there.
Georgia Tech has just unveiled the most terrifying machine in the world: One that can accomplish complex tasks by using objects in the environment around it.
Georgia Tech Professor Mike Stillman is studying robot navigation amongst movable obstacles, and also taking a look at the cognitive process that we fleshy humans go through to grab “arbitrary” objects and use them creatively to solve problems.
He’s going to marry the two and bring about the doom of humanity.
Stillman theorizes that future robots — or Terminators — will see objects on the ground, and run through a list of possible uses for those objects. For example, if the robot is trying to get to higher ground and sees a chair, the robot might recognize that the chair could be utilized toward that goal.
Or by picking up a metal pipe, it could understand that the pipe could be used for leverage toward lifting a tree trunk off another object — say, a soldier, or forest firefighter.
It could also see that metal pipe and recognize that if you apply enough pressure to a human cranium, it can disable that human entirely.
You think the Prime Directive will save you?! This ain’t RoboCop, this is real!
The Office of Naval Research is super interested in getting us all killed, so they’ve given Stillman a $900,000 grant.
Question: Are we dead or are we super dead?
