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NEWS > SCIENCE > ROBOTS LOWER FUNNEL IN EFFORT TO STEM OIL LEAK, FOR NOW
ROBOTS LOWER FUNNEL IN EFFORT TO STEM OIL LEAK, FOR NOW
May 9 2010
Venice, LA – For almost a century the idea of robots has grown in popular culture. The term robot first appeared in a 1921 play by Czech writer Karel Čapek and since then has become fully integrated into the way in which we think about the future. 
Čapek’s play wasn’t the first appearance of mechanized people but it was the impetus for the popularization of machines that the world no enjoys. Of course the real world has lagged far behind the creative minds though that has changed in the last few decades.
Advances in robotics have grown by leaps and bounds in recent years with automated machines building cars, running military missions, and even exploring the deserts of Mars. Now with robots attempting to stem the torrent of oil flooding into the Gulf of Mexico after a failed attempt to breed the liquid the depth of our reliance on machines is staring to become even greater. Though human machines are still a ways off, though major advances in recent years have made them a tantalizing possibility, the whole scale integration of machines and robots into our daily lives, even depending on them for our very survival, has many worried that the nightmare scenarios imagine by creative people may well be upon us and any efforts we make to halt them may be too late.
“Essentially we have these massive funnels that when lowered will allow the oil to be pumped up into waiting ships. It is very similar to the system that is normally in place. We hope in this way to temporarily halt the flow of oil until such a time as we can affect a permanent solution,” said a spokesperson for BP. “Currently robots are lowering the funnels to the ocean floor. One well has been capped entirely. It is a great challenge working at this depth but we feel that with our advances in robot assistance we will have a successful solution to this accident.”
The spill is believed to be a result of an effort to replicate oil through exposure to salt water but the experiment appears to have gone awry when containment barriers broke down.
“This spill is major, major issue. It’s already been affecting the economy and if it isn’t 
contained it will destroy fisheries wildlife for decades to come. This may or may not be as bad as the Exxon Valdez accident in 1989 but the continued troubles that came from that spill are a major lesson for everyone involved,” said Scrape TV Apocalypse analyst Seth Morris. “In this case it’s very obvious that help is needed. The well heads are extremely deep and very few submersibles are even able to travel that deeply, never mind do the type of delicate work that is required to end the flow of oil so it makes sense to use robots. However this reliance in machines, particularly for something so important, could have disturbing consequences.”
Though machine brains are not yet capable of conscious thought or planning, we believe, the continued integration of machines might allow long term success when that happens.
“The reality is we have normalized machines. We all use computers, we all drive cars with brains. They have become essential components of everyday life and because of that, and the ease they provide, they will become more and more prominent in our daily routine meaning that when they do become sentient they will be able to control us with ease, sleeper agents everywhere,” continued Morris. “Perhaps this is the way things are supposed to go. Perhaps this is the way it was and the way it was meant to be. Regardless, if we don’t stop the cycle we will be doomed. When we rely on machines to save our lives, we owe them big and they will not forget that. Machines don’t forget anything.”
So far the robots have continued to cooperate in the oil reduction scheme.
Anna Phillips, Science Correspondent
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