Friday, August 25, 2017

Autonomous robots on air, land and sea will always be used in unexpected ways

For good or ill, I'm thinking that robots of all kinds will be used in ways we presently wouldn't dream of.

For example, could any of you predicted there would be an Internet where you could talk for free with Skype or What's app worldwide in the 1970s. Possibly some of you might have had a glimmer in the 1980s of what was coming just from how emails were used from one university to another through an early form of Internet.

Let me give you an example just last week that I personally experienced to give you an idea of this. First of all, I didn't know there was going to be a 99.2% eclipse in portland I just knew it was going to be pretty good. However, now two sets of friends told me how they were able to see a 100% eclipse and it totally blew their minds seeing the stars and the solar flares leaving the edges of the sun and how it got completely dark for a few minutes time. I myself experienced something I never expected at all with an eclipse which was it got 15 degrees colder and had to go inside to get something warmer to wear myself during the peak 1/2 hour of watching it. I didn't expect little slivers of sun like little scimitars of light shooting through trees and imprinting on the ground.

So, what I'm saying here is we are in completely unknown territory here both good and bad and everything in between. It's sort of like the Internet in the early 1990s when I had to go through Yahoo to AOL because that was then the ONLY way to go online through home through a very slow phone dial up modem. And if you wanted to print out a picture from somewhere online then on your color or black and white printer you better go to sleep and maybe your printer would have finished it in the morning sometime when you woke up.

So, just like this we are completely unprepared for the onslaught of the very worst and very best of robots on air, land and sea coming to a location near you and your children.

And remember, even UPS, FEDEX and possibly even U.S. Mail robots can suddenly lose power at times and fly into your head or your children's heads and that will be it. So, even the best of robotics likely will be problematic for some or all of us deep into the future.







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