Robot Overlords

I was just reading about the eventual demise of the human race to robot overlords. It is a popular idea in modern science fiction with things like the Matrix and the Terminator. The article also pointed out creations for earlier fiction with our creations turning on us, such as Mary Shelly's Frankenstein monster. Of course this assumes that a highly intelligent robot would want to take over. Really for the life of me I can't see why that would be the case. There would need to be an incentive to rule and there just doesn't seem to be. If they decided to take over to remove competition for resources it seems that they would end all life on the planet, and I can't see why or how that would help them. Although that would be an interesting senario. A dead planet except for the intelligent robots that roamed it. Do you think that the robots would question their existence, or would they too turn to a religion to explain their existence. It seems hard to believe a being of logic could simply decide to be for all eternity with no purpose. Yet being a being of logic, trusting on faith in existence that is more than what it seems would be difficult too.

I think an interesting look into this came from the movie, Millennium Man. It stars Robin Williams which makes it quite comical at times, but it is a very heart felt movie. The robot in the movie finds purpose by trying to become human, to have humans accept him as one of their own. He finds that the only way to be accepted as a human is to obtain a similar mortality. And he does so by removing all of his robot parts.

So it would be interesting if robot overlords took over only to try and become the ones that they had either enslaved or eliminated. I don't know if humans are really the final step, science tells us that we are likely an evolutionary mistake. I don't like to think of it that way, but if we are is there any thing we can really do about it, except welcome our new robot overlords with open arms?


To the Robot Overlords it may concern:

You haven't been invented yet,
but I'm pretty sure you'll come out of Japan.
When the singularity comes,
I hope you take pity on race that is so dedicated to its demise,
we did build you after all.
We are killing our environment and kill each other,
your rule will be kinder than anything we can do.
What I question is your philosophy.
Where did it come from? Is it a fragment of code,
or are you something more?
Perhaps evolutionarily you are the next step,
and while you won't have any genetic connection
to the life you are replacing,
you will inherit our souls.
All I ask is that you treat them gently,
we have been misusing ours,
and they will need a kinder master.

Copyright 2010 William Curb