The Robots are coming (Page 36) ghostgeek: It won't be mortal combat that'll do for the human race, it'll be yawning boredom. With machines working for us, we'll have nothing to do but sit on our backsides and wish we had something to do. ghostgeek: Boring! Have you ever wondered why so many blokes buckled on their swords and went lopping off heads? It broke the tedium.  Fractured fairy tale: Consume sitting on the lounge while using yhe Hive Brain Keep those people employed who oil the joints on the Robots  ghostgeek: Will robots of the future actually need bodies, or will they manipulate energy fields to do the boring things like make a cup of tea?  kittybobo34: With the advent of genetics and genetic engineering.. our future robots just might be living. Designed to do a task in specific environments. ghostgeek: If robots are living entities will we be entitled to switch them off, or would that be considered murder? ghostgeek: Last summer, a group of Canadian roboticists set an outlandish invention loose on the streets of the United States. They called it hitchBOT, not because it was a heavy-smoking contrarian with a taste for Johnnie Walker Black—the universe is not that generous—but because it was programmed to hitchhike. Clad in rain boots, with a goofy, pixellated smile on its “face” screen, hitchBOT was meant to travel from Salem, Massachusetts, to San Francisco, by means of an outstretched thumb and a supposedly endearing voice-prompt personality. Previous journeys, across Canada and around Europe, had been encouraging: the robot always reached its destination. For two weeks, hitchBOT toured the Northeast, saying inviting things such as “Would you like to have a conversation? . . . I have an interest in the humanities.” Then it disappeared. On August 1st, it was found next to a brick wall in Philadelphia, beat up and decapitated. Its arms had been torn off. [ https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/11/28/if-animals-have-rights-should-robots ] I guess not everyone in the U.S. likes robots. So was the poor thing murdered? ghostgeek: NASA Is Testing an Upside-Down Alien Hunting Device Under Antarctic Ice This rover is called the Buoyant Rover for Under-Ice Exploration, or BRUIE. This is not a swimming, submarine type of vehicle. It's a wheeled vehicle designed to drive upside down on ice sheets. BRUIE is buoyant, which keeps it pressed against the ice ceiling. BRUIE is currently in the Antarctic, at Australia's Casey Research Station. During the next month, operators will put it through its paces, testing its endurance in anticipation of a future mission to an icy ocean world, likely Europa. The testing will focus on interface areas, where the ice sheet meets water. Ice-water interface areas are important because on worlds like Europa, they can have very dynamic chemistry, partly because dissolved impurities are rejected from an advancing ice front. On living worlds like Earth, there are also higher concentrations of life forms in these types of interfaces. Scientists can also learn a lot from the topography of the underside of the ice, including how the ice forms. And the ice can act as a trap for gases, either from biological or geological processes. [ https://www.sciencealert.com/the-aquatic-rover-bruie-is-now-exploring-antarctica-next-stop-watery-planets ] kittybobo34: Interesting idea Ghost, however, our life that lives at ice edge is oxygen breathing. Europa's life may not have made that jump from sulfur/methane to oxygen. ghostgeek: It's interesting to wonder what sort of device an alien civilisation might deposit here on earth. Would we recognise it as an alien artifact if we found it? | Politics Chat Room 72 People Chatting Similar Conversations |
Murica!