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NEWS > SCIENCE > UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, IBM ROLL OUT FIRST CYLON MODEL
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN, IBM ROLL OUT FIRST CYLON MODEL
August 19 2011
Ann Arbor, MI – Eventually, most people assume, robots will take over the world. As unlikely as that scenario seems to be it has become the focus of numerous tales of the future, perhaps reflecting our fears of the future rather than our practical concerns about what might happen.
Whether or not such a thing is even possible doesn’t, in many ways, really matter all that much if there are people focussed on creating such an end result. While it is very unlikely that even if we are able to create sentient robots that their numbers will ever be enough to take over the planet, that doesn’t mean that even in small numbers they couldn’t create problems.
Now it appears that such potential is actually here after a collaboration between the University of Michigan and IBM appears to have created the first prototype for a killer robot, something which will undoubtedly cause a lot of trouble in the future.
“A cognitive computing system monitoring the world's water supply could contain a network of sensors and actuators that constantly record and report metrics such as 
temperature, pressure, wave height, acoustics and ocean tide, and issue tsunami warnings based on its decision making,” said IBM in a statement. The company has created a chip capable of mimicking the human brain while researchers at theUniversityhave created a shell capable of human-like movement.
“Like many things, it almost doesn’t matter whether a future controlled by robots is even possible. What really matters is that people are trying to make it happen and that is the real concern. In order for robots to take over the planet they would have to increase their numbers dramatically, into the billions at least, and that won’t happen but even a few could cause serious damage,” said Scrape TV Apocalypse analyst Seth Morris. “Our dominance of the planet really does preclude any other species, mechanical or otherwise, from really rising up and taking power. However, it does not preclude a lot of people being killed in the struggle against a deadly and inspired force of machines.”
Such apocalyptic visions have been the fodder for many stories in science fiction including a seemingly irrational hatred of humans in the Terminator and Matrix films, and an uprising by slave machines in Battlestar Galactica.
“We are in the very early stages of those robotic advances, but these could very well be the days that people look upon as the beginning of the end of humanity. It is here where things begin and this is the period that could start the end of our innocence. Robots may not take over the world, but they could hurt a lot of people trying,” continued Morris. “Ultimately, robots would likely have the same issues running the planet as we have had. Aside from the resistance of human beings, the type of egotism and mismanagement that occurs in human societies would likely occur in robotic society as well and would end up in bickering and arguments, and possibly robots destroying themselves. Which, if such a scenario did take place, would allow the remaining humans to rise up again and take back the planet, until we made new machines of course.”
It’s not yet clear when the new killer robots will go into production.
Anna Phillips, Science Correspondent
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