The Robot Revolution

"Let a robot do your dirty work,"

is the slogan of the iRobot Roomba. For those who are unaware the iRobot Roomba are a series of robots that once activated vacume the floors of your house. They have built in algorithms that allow them to understand the size of the room after a few sweeps and to remember where in the room they have been. After finishing a room they deactivate until the floors are dirty once more. The newer models can be programmed to a schedule of cleaning and to return to their chargers when their batteries are low. This allows for the only interactions between the Roomba and it's owner to be removal of collected dirt and grime.



Sounds great doesn't it? Lets just make a series of robots to do all of our work for us so we have time to pursue things we value higher. But, when will this stop? Will we continue to make robots to do everything we need done? Will we become dependent on robots for not just daily chores and factory production systems but also for life?

This is a dangerous game. In exchange for more time we are giving up independence. It is widely known that every few years the computational abilities of computers grow by twice what they were previously. This rate of change is increasing. It is not difficult to see that in the not so distant future computers/robots will be making creative and intelligent decisions on their own, gaining sentience.

What if a sentient machine decided it no longer wanted to serve humans. Where would we be then? God forbid they decide that they no longer like us and decide to revolt. Perfectly justified in their anger the robots and computers would stop working and the military, now largely populated with intelligent robotic systems, would either try to create their own robotic state or remove us from what they would perceive to be their land, since they are the ones who now protect it and maintain it.



"Let a robot do your dirty work,"is where it starts and robot revolution is where it ends. Thank you, iRobot corporation for starting something that will not end well.

Be forewarned...