ROBOT UPRISING

The Terminator: Perhaps not as fictional as we thought.

Could Robots Take Over? Scientists believe it to be a possibility.

In films, books, and real life, robotics have always been viewed as one of humanities greatest achievments. The act of giving prostetic life to an inatimate object is quite an amazing feat. We've seen and imagined robots in all shapes and sizes, real and fictional, realistic and ridiculous. Robots like Wall-E, and R2-D2 are characters we've come to love, but what if they actually had a secret plan to exterminate the human race? As ridiculous as it seems, scientists at Cambridge university are plannining on creating a facility to test and prevent robots from taking control. The project is headed by Cambridge philosophy professor Huw Price, cosmology and astrophysics professor Martin Rees and Skype co-founder Jaan Tallinn. The Center for the Study of Existential Risk (CSER) will study dangers posed by biotechnology, artificial life, nanotechnology and even climate change. Although most people imagine the robots uprising to be like Skynet in the Terminator movies where giant robots with machine guns mow down innocent people, the scientists at CSER will be studying robots that have control to much more real and serious technology. Highly dangerous tools of war and science controlled by government computers will be assessed by the center and secured with more manual restrictions, in other words they will be making things less computer friendly and more dependent on human involvment. It is a precaution that will involve much more work, but is a necessary one to take. One of the more likely reasons that a possible robot uprising could occur would be through computers becoming more self aware and an increase of unmonitored communication between them. Professor Huw Price of CSER stated that the robots bent on human extinction would be, "machines that are not malicious, but machines whose interests don't include us." The center plans to launch in a year but before then, just keep your eye on Arnold.
                 -Sean Jarrell-Hurtado

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-20501091