The Low-Tech Times

Update 07/29/2009:

Thank you Jon for submitting the following story with the ominous subject “It begins.”

Sweden’s Local News in English reports:

A Swedish company has been fined 25,000 kronor ($3,000) after a malfunctioning robot attacked and almost killed one of its workers at a factory north of Stockholm…

“I’ve never heard of a robot attacking somebody like this,” he told news agency TT. 

And thanks also to Jason for sharing this UK Guardian article by Bobbie Johnson.  The article is entitled ‘Flesh-eating robot’ is actually a vegetarian, say inventors:

“We completely understand the public’s concern about futuristic robots feeding on the human population, but that is not our mission,” said Harry Schoell, the chief executive of Cyclone Power Technologies, one of the companies behind the machine.

Originally published 07/16/2008:

Lara Farrar wrote an interesting piece for CNN about a group of experts that will be discussing the possibility that hi-tech machines could put an end to the human race:

On the final day of the Global Catastrophic Risk Conference, experts will focus on what could be the unintended consequences of new technologies, such as superintelligent machines that, if ill-conceived, might cause the demise of Homo sapiens.

“Any entity which is radically smarter than human beings would also be very powerful,” said Dr. Nick Bostrom, director of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, host of the symposium. “If we get something wrong, you could imagine the consequences would involve the extinction of the human species.”

It seems pretty far-fetched to me, but is interesting nevertheless. My hope is that low-tech life will prevail. I wonder what the staff at RobotInTheWoods.com think?

I very much enjoyed watching the first two Terminator movies, but have yet to see the third one. The movie series, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger depicts a future where humans fighting for survival against with deadly cyborgs. Links to the DVDs are below.  Perhaps they are worth watching to see what we could be up against.