The Robot Era

For this weeks blog the class was asked to check out Slashdot. http://slashdot.org/articles/07/09/09/1420225.shtmlSlashdot is a website that is focused on the news in the technology world. The article that I choose to do my blog on is called Smarter-than-Human Intelligence & The Singularity Summit. The short article was written by a writer by the pen name of Runamuck. This article caught my eye because it speaks about a project to create a type of intelligence that is smarter than a human being.

I read this article because it interests me to think that a computer one day may be smarter than the people who created it.The article then states that if a computer was ever created to be smarter than humans then that computer would be able to make other computers that were even smarter. This whole premise reminds me of many sci-fi movies that involve evil robots who want to overthrow the planet. This thought is a kind of scary one. I don't believe that man will create such a computer any time soon, but if they did I would hope that nothing like those horror movies ever happened. It is probably foolish to think that man would ever have to protect its planet from killer robots, but I can't help think about it. The author states that “the first ultra-intelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make”. I find this quote very interesting because it assumes that if humans ever created this ultra-intelligent computer then human’s job of creation would be done. The computers would now pass mankind and take over any problem solving issues. This would eliminate human made technology. Humans would now be inefficient compared to the superior computers. The brighter side of these intelligent computers is that maybe they could solve world problems that man can not. Maybe these computers would actually create a more peaceful world.