This post may come off sounding like great plot to a SciFi film, and it probably is. The problem is that every link I’m putting in here is either an academic paper, or a research project that is actually currently underway, usually for military contract.

So how do manage to destroy ourselves?

Self adaptive robots: designed to survive, read situations, help each other and self evolve. Basically the Godel machines that DARPA already appears to be working on.

The robots mimic basic animals to begin with, and are too basic to be called AI. They do have limited survival drive and can share information. They could also reproduce given the availability of finished materials. To think that it would start out with some grandiose A.I., like in the Terminator films is misguided for numerous reasons, least of all being the complexity of creating a real A.I. system which requires more than mere binary states of current non-quantum computational architecture, and basic safeguards one would hope the folks DARPA are smart enough to install.

It begins with basic models escaping field tests and self reconstructing due to limited processing power of single units. As more units develop by scavenging parts from available sources (and places like electronics stores would basically become a spawning ground) they become faster at building their own basic models, as well as constructing new models, due to increased numbers available to help construct others and the processing power of working in hive like networks. Other designs are quickly developed through trial and error processes to make them better suited for specific tasks.

What starts out as basic survive and adapt units has now become a colony that has specialised roles.

• Hunter Gatherers
• Guardians
• Builders
• Processing Units

The threat would be initially ignored as science fiction, until Guardian units started attacking people to defend colonies, or hunter gatherer units identified human dwellings as optimal material gathering grounds, or worse, that some human tissues would be naturally useful.

Further specialisations would occur in Guardians to specifically attack humans who are active threats. Units from different colonies would pass on information and designs to other colonies, if they exist which is likely at this point as some units would have fallen out of the communication net, when they randomly pass each other buy.

True A.I. would be highly unlikely to come about in this instance as self adaptation routines are unlikely to create anything more advanced than methods for dealing with issues. The necessity for actual thought and reason would simply not exist, and the ability to further improve on designs to achieve this end are equally unlikely.  “Smart” behaviours would that mimick thought, at least in a tactical sense, would be present and slowly become more advanced. Electronics stores & warehouses will become hives. Places that humans have to go to, such as petrol station, will become assault grounds should humans become widely identified as a threat. In this instance, retaliation would occur, but be largely pointless as colonies and hives that are attacked will quickly learn to hide processing units and some basic HGs and Builders as a means of continuing the colony and starting over.

Whilst they may be rudimentary compared to the robotic swarms we expect from post-apocalyptic science fiction films, they still hold two major advantages over us. 1) They don’t work as collective individuals; and 2) they will have a learning time of zero for replacement units, versus the at least ten years it would take for our own. From a purely mathematical stand point, there’s no way they could lose.

We’ve already covered cyborgs and robots in our previous discussions, but it seems a lot of people simply aren’t comfortable with the idea of replacing parts of themselves, or entire humans, in order to get laborious jobs done. Frankly, I think you’re screaming wussies, but that could just be me.

So if you’re not prepared to be replaced by robotic labour, and you’re not content with hacking off one of your own arms to get a cybernetic upgrade, what are you going to do?

The answer lies in augmented exo-suits.

The suit most people are probably familiar with is the classic heavy load power lifter that Ripley hops into in Aliens. Cyberpunk fiction, and robot filled anime in particular, is choc full of them. Works of Masamune Shirow, such as Appleseed, come to mind.

These sorts of heavy labour and, dare I say it, combat suits are actually not very far from becoming a very practical reality.

There are two major firms involved in this race:

1) The American based Sarcos, manufacturers of the XOS (pronounced “Eck-soss” as in Exoskeleton) suit, which is being billed as the real life Iron Man. Together with a nice fat grant from DARPA, this is assuredly going to end up being for military applications after they’ve made it larger, more armoured, and with tactical mount points… oh yeah, and figured out a way to give it more than 30 minutes of operational effectiveness if the battery isn’t breached.

2)  The Japanese based (I shit you not) Cyberdine Corporation. No, they really did give themselves the same name as the company that brought about Skynet in the Terminator series. To make matters worse, their suit is called HAL 5. Add some AI into it, and we’re amazingly fucked.

Interestingly enough, the HAL suit has been in development for less time, has been designed for more medical and restorative means than the XOS, but is ready to go into commercial production next year. Perhaps more interestingly is that it looks better and currently provides better armour and battery life than the American product, which could probably use a bullet proof corset underneath it. Whether this has something to do with the Japanese insistence that form be a part of function, or they’re just trying to make sure that it looks like a friendly piece of techno-oriented fashion, as opposed to some sociopathic death bot, who knows.

Fact of the matter is that both of these are going to revolutionise the building industry. No longer will fat, lazy brickies be able to say that they can’t possibly lift those four bricks. No longer will carpenters claim that they haev bad knees or backs and can’t kneel down to fire off nail guns into the boards. Strain injuries will be a thing of the past.

Instead, the new claims will be getting too much tomato sauce into the joints, and that the missus forgot to plug the suit in overnight.

So, let’s get on to the questions that no one else is asking:

1. Will young punks figure out a way to make this a cool form of transportation that senior citizens demand be removed from their lawn?
2. Will people start playing sports in these? And if so, how far away will a 3 point shot have to be when there’s an ability to lift and shift 400kg?
3. How are hoons going to start hot rodding their exo suits?
4. 

   Couldn't resist

   What kind of response can we expect from law enforcement agencies when these start getting used in crimes? Is it ok to assume that these are deadly weapons, like steel capped boots, and therefore shoot someone in the face? And can you use explosive ordinance if their exosuit has a faceplate?

5. Will they bother making models aimed specifically at women, like the Holden Barina? If so, will they have breasts on the chest plates, or armour pleated plated skirts?

According to SciFi, robots come in three flavours: Adorably cute ones with a full gamut of emotion and expressions (i.e. No.5, Short Circuit), homicidal death droids that are intent on nothing short of the eradication of the human species (i.e. T-models, Terminator), or the in between robots, that are actually rather useful and do a variety of tasks such as providing comic relief (i.e. Kryten, Red Dwarf). In cyberpunk fiction, they’re usually the last of the three… neither good nor evil, with the exception of what they’ve been programmed to do. More often than not, they’re programmed for specific tasks, and with a minimal level of sentience.

Again, people laugh at the idea of robots, but they are already amazingly common place without people even being aware of it. Perhaps not as complex as those envisioned by Asimov, but all around us none the less. Smart cars, semi-intelligent assembly line machines, and even rudimentary A.I. driven units that have the cognitive processing abilities of insects and lower order mammals.

But cyberpunk fiction does not stop with robots being humanoid. Often, we see them in use as pets, such as the owl in Blade Runner, because live animals are something of a rarity in a technologically oriented future. Technological determinism alone states that it will become harder and harder to keep real animals, and we’re already doing a decent job at replacing them.

Nintendogs, for the Nintendo DS console, is one of the highest selling games. It has a number of spinoffs for other pets as well. There are documented cases of people neglecting their real dogs for their permanently cuter, less messy, more “human” virtual pets. There are also physical robotic replacements for a number of pets, such as Sony’s AIBO electronic dog (admittedly not that bright, but they get ebtter with each generation) or robotic fish… and they can be custom ordered into bodies not currently possible under biological sciences.

Of course, the Japanese make a much cuter one.

But getting back to where it matters, people.

Numerous companies are rather advanced in both animatronic and AI capabilities of robotics, with groups like MIT and Honda leading the way with the MDS and ASIMO. However, it’s often smaller “garage” labs that are making the more amazing breakthroughs in areas that really matter, such as robots capable of body language. Obviously, Japan leads the way in this area, but it’s often the hobby enthusiasts that come up with Android Synthetica, recreation people, such as the Actroid or even Project Aiko by lone inventor Le Trung.

Fact of the matter is that Robots are able to replace a lot of what we do already. As the development and production costs come down, the dystopian future vision of masses of unemployed anti-robot demonstrations and violence (Barrier Riots envisioned by Asimov), before a utopian golden age of labour free days seems quite real… But these are grand social visions and don’t touch on the every day work-a-life of the common joe.

1. If you get retrenched because your job was taken by a robot, and then the robot gets retrenched due to a newer model coming out, do you become good drinking buddies?
2. What do you get robot employees for moral boosting purposes?
3. If robots are programmed with artificial intelligence based upon our own, does that mean they’ll be lazy arseholes that only want to put in the absolute bare minimum of work?
4. Lots of sad sad individuals fall in love with their cars. With all that love and care going in to a robot, what happens when you can finally stick your genitals somewhere they’re not going to get 3rd degree burns, or make it hard to shift gears?