The Smart Robots Are Coming

Today, 3-30-2014, the StarTribune carried an article in the OP4 section about robots, and the article is copied from The Economist.

Let me quote from the article: "But reliable robots--especially ones required to work beyond the safety cages of a factory floor--have proved hard to make and robots are still pretty stupid. So although they fascinate people, they have not yet made much of a mark on the world.
That seems about to change. The exponential growth in the power of silicon chips, digital sensors and high-bandwidth communications improves robots just as it improves all sorts of other products. And three other factors are at play."

These three other factors are more efficient robotics R&D, investment and imaginative applications of existing robotic science.

The writer talks of robots taking over all the work jobs, so humans become obsolete and inefficient, only living lives of forced leisure. This would be a terrible mistake. People need physical work as well as mental work to stay healthy. Robots may be cheaper and more efficient, eventually, than human labor, but efficiency would be most unsettling, even disastrous in unforeseen ways. We need to get up everyday and earn a paycheck. We need to do some of the physical labor too?

The writer then asks a stirring question: "Is it necessary that wars always be fought by people who can feel pity and offer clemency, and yet who can also be cruel beyond all tactical requirements?"

I believe we can and must have skin in the game, including dying in battle. We need to stay in control. If we send slave robots out as mercenaries to fight our battles, and they rebel, having become an equally or even more intelligent creatures than ourselves, then the totalitarian world of the Terminators is upon us.

The advent on the scene at this point in history of smart robots would indicate that humans are now gods, having created intelligent beings, an intelligent if electronic life form.

God would not be opposed to this if we handle it well. The only way to handle it well is to subscribe to the right set of values--Mavellonialism. As anarchist-individuators, we would have the briliance, the versatility, the toughness and will to create smart robots, without allowing them to horn in on our whole existence.

In short, as a race of creators of new species, we are minor gods. Minor gods can only thrive and survive if they live in accordance with the right value set as prescribed by God through natural/supernatural law.