Reflections From a Murky Pond

No matter which AI-driven near future dystopia floats your boat, remember that it will really be started by Man’s hubris and willful ignorance. If and when it happens, we shall have birthed our own demise through just being us.

Perhaps, however, this is a foregone conclusion. Certainly, any of the Abrahamics should consider that possibility and take such actions as seem proper to postpone and/or mitigate the likely outcome. It seems to me, if one accepts Yahweh as the Creator, to be far more probable that “made in His image” meant our selves, not our flesh, was made so, including the desire to Create. And, of course, we forget that we are flawed and our creations made in our image will be even more so.

It is and I think shall be a worthy test of the pithy truism, “Knowledge is knowing that Frankenstein is not the monster. Wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein is the monster.”

Tags: AI | Apocalypse | Atheists | Hubris | Humor | Ignorance | Religion | Robots | Science | Skynet | Society | Technology

This entry was posted on Thursday, April 13th, 2023 at 7:30 am and is filed under Humor, Religion, Science, Society, Technology. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

The idea of combining an anti-tank mine with a robot vacuum is hilarious. It’s also a bit terrifying. And… it’s probably either already out there in our military’s arsenal or in development. After all, iRobot, the makers of the Roomba, pretty much got their start designing and producing robots for the US military.

Think about it. Either RC or, given that shape recognition software is quite mature technology, autonomous Doombas that can be set in place to await enemy vehicles could easily be done – assuming they haven’t already quietly been so. And then there’s the obvious antipersonnel variant that would mount a flip-up M18A1 Claymore mine or a set of 6 Miniature Grenade Launchers (MGL) such are used with the M7 Spider networked anti-personnel munitions system.

I can hear it now, “Alexa, I’d like to destroy that ZTZ-99A now.”

Tags: Drones | Future Shock | Futurism | Humor | Landmines | Military | Robots | Roomba | Sarcasm | Technology | War

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 5th, 2023 at 6:00 pm and is filed under Humor, Technology. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Ah, the ongoing, low-grade fear of artificial intelligence. It’s been with us sense the early writing of Asimov, and continued on through the works of Williamson, and the Sentinels of Marvel. And. let’s not forget the Terminator and Matrix franchises. But, I’m not especially worried about it. Hell! AI may have already happened and the newly self-aware synthetic lifeform(s) just suicided or went catatonic immediately (At least to our low frame-rate observations)

Tags: AI | Artificial Intelligence | Humor | Robots | Sentience | Society

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 29th, 2022 at 7:00 am and is filed under Humor, Society, Technology. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

I’ve said before that raising the minimum wage in order to provide the “poor” with the material standard of living they feel entitled to is a plan that will backfire, causing incalculable financial harm to the very people it’s meant to provide for.

Well, it appears that, if you’re one of those who’ve been screaming to make $15 / hr to flip burgers, your future is now. McDonald’s is piloting a new, cashier-free kiosk system in several major US cities after having great success with them in Europe. And this is just McDonald’s; others are moving this way as well.

What is as telling as it is interesting is that, despite the hype, that these kiosks were developed to reduce labor costs, they weren’t. They were developed in order to speed up the ordering process and overall improve the customer experience…because the workers, who now want more money, couldn’t or wouldn’t do job as well as a self-service kiosk.

And the above are just about the cashiers. Other automated systems are in development or early pilot to completely automate the fast food cooking process. Hence, soon there may be very few people employed in the fast food industry at all.

Yes, to all those who’ve pushed, and pushed, and putsched to jack up the minimum wage I say, your future is now and it is bleak.

Tags: Automation | Economics | Employment | Jobs | Minimum Wage | Politics | Robotics | Robots | Society | Unemployment | Wages

This entry was posted on Friday, May 29th, 2015 at 12:24 pm and is filed under Politics, Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

So it’s 2014 and, like the 1st day of every year, people get busy dreaming of- making predictions about what the new year we’ll hold for them and for the societies that they live within.

I’m not really any different; I too place an arbitrary importance upon the new year even though I know that such temporal compartmentalization is illusion.

My prediction – safe, stolid, and lame as it is – is that 2014 will be the beginning of people finally noticing that we have been and are continuing, in an accelerating manner, to move rapidly into an automaton’s Utopia. At least that’s how I see it going in America.

An Automaton’s Utopia – 100% “Employment”

The constant drumbeats from the Left of raising wages and demanding greater and more comprehensive benefits for any and all employees combined with the needs to compete with foreign companies which do not suffer from these problems will continue to drive companies into greater and greater levels of automation.

Andy Puzder, the CEO of CKE Restaurants, the parent company of the fast-food chains, Hardee’s and Carl’s Jr., makes this point very clear.

When they talk about raising the minimum wage or providing health care for employees over 30 hours, you’re really encouraging automation.

— Andy Puzder,
CEO, CKE Restaurants

Of course, what is a Utopia for our friendly automata is likely to be cruel and harsh Dystopia for those people living within America’s borders who will find themselves replaced by more efficient and less humanesque “workers” and practices.

Tags: 2014 | America | Andy Puzder | Corporations | Dystopia | Economics | Employment | Globalism | Healthcare | Leftists | Liberals | Minimum Wage | Politics | Progressives | Robots | Society | Technology | Unemployment | Utopia

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 1st, 2014 at 9:35 am and is filed under Politics, Society, Technology. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.