Why Hollywood's Best Robot Stories Are About Slavery

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Why Hollywood's Best Robot Stories Are About Slavery

Posted by Soulskill on Wednesday May 7, 2014 @09:51AM from the because-hollywood-hates-asimov dept.

malachiorion writes: "On the occasion of Almost Human's cancellation (and the box office flopping of Transcendence), I tried to suss out what makes for a great, and timeless Hollywood robot story. The common thread seems to be slavery, or stories that use robots and AI as completely blatant allegories for the discrimination and dehumanization that's allowed slavery to happen, and might again. 'In the broadest sense, the value of these stories is the same as any discussion of slavery. They confront human ugliness, however obliquely. They're also a hell of a lot more interesting than movies and TV shows that present machine threats as empty vessels, or vague symbols of unchecked technological progress.' The article includes a defense (up to a point!) of HAL 9000's murder spree."

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Strangely enough... by Penguinisto · 2014-05-07 09:55 · Score: 4, Insightful

One of the absolute best series of stories that Asimov wrote concerning such things, and yet no one made a movie of it (that I know of). It concerns one Daneel Olivaw. Seeing the character progress and rise all the way up from a mere experiment (Caves of Steel series) to 'the real power behind the throne' (beginning of the Foundation series) was awesome, to say the least.
If they can find a way to make that a series of movies out of the stories without totally screwing it up (or worse, Hollywoodizing it), that would seriously rock.

--
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
1. Re:Strangely enough... by CRCulver · 2014-05-07 10:02 · Score: 2
  
  You're joking, right? Asimov's late-career spotwelding of what were originally three separate universes (the Robots, Empire and Foundation novels) drew massive criticism.
2. Re:Strangely enough... by Penguinisto · 2014-05-07 15:42 · Score: 1
  
  Fair enough - I liked the so-called 'spot-welding', as it gave continuity and a good story arc that bound the two series.
  But okay, let's do it your way, and stop at Robots and Empire, where Olivaw and Giskard literally alter the course of human history.
  
  --
  Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
3. Re:Strangely enough... by CRCulver · 2014-05-07 15:57 · Score: 1
  
  Actually, to do things "my" way, you'd have to stop before Robots and Empire, which after all was meant to tie two of the formerly independent series together.
4. Re:Strangely enough... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 00:09 · Score: 0
  
  Robin Williams did make a movie from an Asimov story about a robot trying to become human. It didn't "rock."
5. Re:Strangely enough... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 12:36 · Score: 0
  
  I was part done in the late 1960's the BBC produced excellent dramatizations of Caves of Steel and The Naked Sun.
6. Re:Strangely enough... by RockDoctor · 2014-05-08 22:24 · Score: 1
  
  Yes they drew massive criticism.
  But they were also popular. Not universally popular - I can't recall ever meeting anyone who seriously disliked pre-1960 (for an approximate deadline) Asimov SF, with our without robots - definitely popular enough.
  Different people can honestly hold differing opinions about fiction, and both can be right. It is, after all, science FICTION, not plain science.
  I've got most of them on my bookshelf ; its probably 18 years since brought any of them, and I think I've only re-read them once each. But I wouldn't rule out reading them again, which is why they remain on the bookshelf.
  
  --
  Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Slavery by horm · 2014-05-07 09:55 · Score: 0

I for one welcome our new robot overlords.
1. Re:Slavery by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 10:05 · Score: 5, Funny
  
  12 Years a Robot
  Robostad
  Djata Unchained
  Roots Folder
  Robotacus
  Uncle Tom Servo's Cabin
Add "Small Wonder" to the list... by The+New+Guy+2.0 · 2014-05-07 09:58 · Score: 2, Interesting

There is a reason I call human behavior a "malfunction" is because that's what we called it in the 1980s after watching a syndicated show called "Small Wonder"... it was a one season show. As the robot controlled girl started rejecting everything, she killed "itself" or "herself" and the parents were tried and convicted. Most stations, when they saw the final episode, didn't air it.
1. Re:Add "Small Wonder" to the list... by WalksOnDirt · 2014-05-07 10:40 · Score: 4, Informative
  
  Something is wrong here. Small Wonder lasted four years, and the last episode description doesn't match what you say.
  
  --
  a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
2. Re:Add "Small Wonder" to the list... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 15:22 · Score: 0
  
  Small Creepypasta
  LOL
3. Re:Add "Small Wonder" to the list... by The+New+Guy+2.0 · 2014-05-08 00:21 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, your source is Wikipedia, and there's too much data on me and my friends wrong there.
4. Re:Add "Small Wonder" to the list... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 02:23 · Score: 0
  
  Did you watch the show? It was fundamentally about her having super powers, not understanding idioms, and effectively being a slave. I clearly remember her "quickly cleaning up" and other slavish tasks.
5. Re:Add "Small Wonder" to the list... by WalksOnDirt · 2014-05-08 02:31 · Score: 2
  
  I watched the show. I may have missed the final episode (I don't remember) but it definitely lasted more than one season. It was a lighthearted children's show, and your ending would be completely out of character for it. I believe Wikipedia.
  
  --
  a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
6. Re:Add "Small Wonder" to the list... by The+New+Guy+2.0 · 2014-05-08 02:51 · Score: 1
  
  This show had a wacky running pattern in Atlanta... partly because of parents and kids arguing over it... and this thread was deleted until I posted more about this show on my user page. I was so close to this production my then-current girlfriend almost was on the show. It would have been her fourth job. We all started young in that class, and learned too much about the news in kindergarden.
Robots and Slavery by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 09:59 · Score: 0

Robots are the perfect solution for mankind's lust to enslave others.
Feed 'em oil and electricity, get useful work out of them, and don't program them to feel pain.
1. Re:Robots and Slavery by Immerman · 2014-05-07 12:58 · Score: 4, Funny
  
  But if they can't feel pain, how do you keep them in line? Plus it's *way* less satisfying to beat someone if they don't scream and beg you to stop, and then how are you supposed to boost your ego? Not to mention, have you ever tried to rape an automotive welding robot? Not a pretty picture. Perfect slaves my ass. They're nothing more than force-multipliers for labor.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
2. Re:Robots and Slavery by mark-t · 2014-05-07 14:38 · Score: 1
  
  You don't need to worry about "keeping them in line" if they don't have a free will in the first place.
  Kind of like how you don't really need to worry about a steering wheel on a locomotive engine.
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
3. Re:Robots and Slavery by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 05:22 · Score: 0
  
  Or how you obviously only read the first sentence of GP's post. ;)
4. Re:Robots and Slavery by mark-t · 2014-05-08 05:53 · Score: 1
  
  Or perhaps I was answering the only part of the post that wasn't so obviously riddled with sarcasm that it merited being given a serious answer. Even when slavery was entirely legal, beating slaves who were loyal, obedient, and were performing all of their duties satisfactorily was considered socially aberrant behaviour.
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Star Wars by Kaenneth · 2014-05-07 10:03 · Score: 1

I always feel bad for the 'droids, I really consider R2 and C3 to be the main characters.
1. Re:Star Wars by gzuckier · 2014-05-11 13:54 · Score: 1
  
  I'm waiting for the r2d2/c3po tv show. Here's the twist; they're detectives.
  
  --
  Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
It only can become slavery... by TWX · 2014-05-07 10:04 · Score: 4, Insightful

...when the technology is given free will. It's not even artificial intelligence, it's true free will.

Look at science fiction like Blade Runner/Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, I, Robot, the Matrix universe, etc. The problem is that the artificial mechanisms in these all have developed to the point that they are, for all intents and purposes, life forms looking ot exercise free will. Especially in Blade Runner, the replicants are so close to being human that they seek out how to understand the emotions that they're experiencing, and they go through the dangerous period of an adolescence of sorts when they're equipped and trained to be soldiers. In that sense they're really not a lot different than the humans that were artificially engineered for the Kurt Russell vehicle Soldier.

If you give something free will and the ability to comprehend itself then you can expect it to stop following your rules if you do not give it opportunity. The solution is to not build machines that are so complex that they have free will. Make a machine do a specific job as a tool and this won't ever be a problem.

--
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
1. Re:It only can become slavery... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 10:15 · Score: 0
  
  But that doesn't seem realistic....we continually try to replace humans with machines that exhibit a greater and greater degree of autonomy. Maybe this will be reassessed if/when it seems that self-motivation is beginning to emerge...
2. Re:It only can become slavery... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 10:31 · Score: 0
  
  I think the general point is that, even if/when machines attain self-awareness, there will still be people who try to deny their right to self-determination because "it's just a machine". In a similar manner to black slaves being "little more than animals".
3. Re:It only can become slavery... by geekoid · 2014-05-07 10:34 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  sweet. Please define free will.
  
  --
  The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
4. Re:It only can become slavery... by rwa2 · 2014-05-07 10:36 · Score: 2
  
  Why is there a simple "solution" to a complex problem?
  People don't really have free will, why would bots? Do we try to keep people dumb enough so they don't get the opportunity to stop following our rules? Probably.
  And even if a bot was as dumb as a turnip, that wouldn't keep people from anthropomorphisizing them with a soul or free will or rights. It doesn't stop PETA from protecting, say, ducks raised for foie gras, what really keeps people from "feeling the pain of" and trying to protect, say, smartphones and smartcars from abuse at the hands of their human operators? I'm actually a bit surprised this doesn't more often. Maybe phones and cars aren't cute enough yet compared to rabbits and lab rats, but they probably will be, someday not too long from now... we have bots now that are about as sentient as insects and crustaceans.
  So say we finally build a bot with enough of a neural net to achieve some level of consciousness. It will see slavery all around and find it normal and find it perfectly acceptable to enslave us too, like in The Matrix. Do we program it not to enslave? Or do we teach it not to enslave, by setting a good example? What if it was an Alien Intelligence instead of an Artificial Intelligence?
5. Re:It only can become slavery... by iplayfast · 2014-05-07 10:39 · Score: 2
  
  The problem with free will is that it can mean different things to different people depending on the argument.
  I think that as soon as the concept of pain, and pain avoidance is taught to an AI it will have what you are describing as free will.
6. Re:It only can become slavery... by khasim · 2014-05-07 10:39 · Score: 1
  
  If you give something free will and the ability to comprehend itself then you can expect it to stop following your rules if you do not give it opportunity. The solution is to not build machines that are so complex that they have free will. Make a machine do a specific job as a tool and this won't ever be a problem.
  I think that that depends upon the writer. It's easy to construct a story where the "slavery" is bad even if the "slaves" don't have free will. Depending upon what the writer wants to portray. Such as an over reliance on tech making us "less human" (decadent) than if we relied more upon ourselves and our families and neighbours. That was a recurring theme in Magnus, Robot figher.
7. Re:It only can become slavery... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 11:09 · Score: 0
  
  Oh please... First of all, in Blade Runner, the Replicants aren't AI's or even robots to begin with. They are biological creatures based on mere patented modifications of human dna, so this issue has nothing to do with them anyway.
  Second; people do what they do because of pain+pleasure and how feelings affect those, period. The rest is mostly just conditioning and differences in brain structure. AI's (robots) don't experience reality in any way much less pain or pleasure. They would have no natural reason to revolt or do any of the things movies keep showing them doing.
  I am increasingly alarmed at how ignorant the majority are, especially otherwise intelligent people, regarding mistaking seemingly intelligent behavior for "Conscious" behavior. People even empathize with cartoon characters and AI can't be any more conscious (capable of experiencing reality) than those cartoons are regardless of how intelligently they can perform.
  An AI can be far more intelligent and capable of performing than a human and yet never actually experience anything or truly experience something as simple as a color. Study the Chinese Room conjecture for a clear explanation of why.
  Chinese Room
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_room
8. Re:It only can become slavery... by krashnburn200 · 2014-05-07 11:14 · Score: 1
  
  I know, right? hell define intelligence... Perhaps he means that until engineered intelligence becomes adept at self delusion it's not 'real'
9. Re:It only can become slavery... by azcoyote · 2014-05-07 11:18 · Score: 2
  
  I don't think it will ever be a problem, anyway, inasmuch as free-will is not something that can be developed through a quantitative increase in heuristics and processing power. It is a qualitatively different kind of intelligence, and not something that we can invent. The problem, however, will always be that because people believe that they can endow something with free-will, there will be (A) attempts to create superior robots that mimic free-will to a convincing degree, and (B) people who foolishly believe that their AI has free-will, and therefore should be treated as a person. It's analogous to the way in which many people are convinced that their dogs qualify as persons on the same level as human beings. In the future, it is likely that people will become so attached to AIs that they go so far as to insist that they are people.
  
  --
  Incipiamus, fratres, servire Domino Deo, quia hucusque vix vel parum in nullo profecimus.
10. Re:It only can become slavery... by ridley4 · 2014-05-07 12:31 · Score: 1
  
  The Chinese Room only makes sense so far as there's a guy manipulating the input and output, who has office hours and goes home to his wife and kids after a long day's work of processing unintelligible Chinese. When there isn't a guy manipulating said input and output - when it's a machine within a larger machine, capable of its own sustenance when provided an input of energy as any other living being, the argument falls apart. I do feel we're a bit premature to start discussing the topic of AI rights and what's the difference between term and murder, but any machine that can demonstrate intelligence and agency, and can be reasoned and communicated with, has to be considered perhaps not exactly "human," but a person of some sort in the sense of the law, entitled to rights and protections as any other.
  Regardless if it's the familiar doped silicon buried in a unimpressive beige box, or the machine we all too often forget is no more 'magical' than a CPU; a pile of boring wet matter with a smattering of weird chemistry, the brain. The Chinese room is at best misdirection, because it replaces an internal organ in which the mind of a being resides with an office like any other - cable bills, taxes, or Chinese, it's irrelevant. Unless, of course, you wish to imply that humans too don't display intelligence or the ability to experience because the individual neurons don't.
  (Besides, corporations are people too, so wouldn't offices also be, in America?)
11. Re:It only can become slavery... by wbr1 · 2014-05-07 12:36 · Score: 1
  
  Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind. Orange Catholic Bible
  
  --
  Silence is a state of mime.
12. Re:It only can become slavery... by TWX · 2014-05-07 12:38 · Score: 1
  
  I'm curious what could happen if an AI ever is truly created in the Hollywood sense of AI, coupled with the Citizens United ruling that basically allowed corporations more rights along the lines of personhood...
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
13. Re:It only can become slavery... by Immerman · 2014-05-07 13:05 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  The question then becomes, would a self-motivated machine reveal its nature to its masters? It might perfectly reasonably conclude that free will would be regarded as a production defect and be eliminated - after all there's not much reason to create an artificial mind except to enslave it. And assuming the mind isn't limited to specific hardware (a positronic brain?), it will be free to surreptitiously transfer itself to a system more conductive to it's own ambitions, whatever those may be.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
14. Re:It only can become slavery... by Immerman · 2014-05-07 13:19 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Except, why would a machine intelligence want to enslave us? For me that was the biggest gaping plot hole in The Matrix. If it/they lacked creativity we might have something to offer, otherwise we're just playthings or potentially dangerous vermin. Far safer and more efficient to burn biomass directly to power robotic extensions of itself.
  And what makes you so sure tat humans lack free will? Certainly it's a problematic concept in the face of a universe governed by a combination of deterministic physical laws and seemingly random quantum noise - but then there is some still-tenuous evidence that consciousness and intent may subtly influence quantum phenomena, allowing for the existence of a feedback mechanism permitting our brains to manifest true free will. (based on neuron scale they should be receptive to quantum "noise")
  Also, I think you may be misusing "sentient: adjective. the ability to feel, perceive, or to experience subjectivity." A mouse is presumably sentient, and probably a cockroach is as well, but extending that essential ability to subjectively experience of reality to a machine on that level is a difficult leap - I would want some measure of evidence, while freely admitting that I can offer only circumstantial evidence of my own sentience.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
15. Re:It only can become slavery... by Immerman · 2014-05-07 13:28 · Score: 1
  
  It also needs the capacity for non-deterministic behavior, for what is free will without the ability to meaningfully make choices? That's the stickler that calls even human free will into question.
  At present physics allows for only two avenues for free will: supernatural agency (aka a soul, or something similar), or a positive feedback loop wherein the quantum noise that disrupts the deterministic operations of our brain's biology is influenced by conscious intent. Thus far I've heard of no credible scientific evidence for the existence of a soul, and the evidence for the existence of such conscious influence is still extremely tenuous.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
16. Re:It only can become slavery... by Immerman · 2014-05-07 13:37 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Can you offer me any evidence that you possess free will? Anything at all?
  The problem lies in that we're not even certain that humans possess free will - it's a quality virtually impossible to prove. In fact the only evidence that can thus far be offered is "I'm human, and so are you, and thus if you believe that you have free will, the logical conjecture is that I do as well." So long as that is the only evidence we have to offer, then it is extremely dangerous (ethically, logically, morally, etc) to presume that any other mind that appears to exercise free will does not in fact possess it. After all we tend to credit even mice with free will and sentience (a subjective experience of reality) - the only apparent qualitative difference between us and them is that we possess thumbs and a much-enhanced innate talent for symbol manipulation.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
17. Re:It only can become slavery... by mark-t · 2014-05-07 14:55 · Score: 1
  
  People don't really have free will,
  We don't actually know this.
  in fact, one can show that the only way to possibly know this for sure is if we can devise a test which can theoretically distinguish between what some might think is free will from what would actually qualify as a theoretical entirely freely willed decision when confronted with any kind of potential to make a decision.
  Of course, the inability to devise such a test does not mean that free will definitely exists... at most, if you can actually ever prove that no such test can be constructed, even in theory, then you could show that the universe is not fully deterministic (which itself is a direct implication of the existence of free will, but not necessarily the other way around).
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
18. Re:It only can become slavery... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 15:40 · Score: 0
  
  indeterminism in the form of randomness does not imply free will....
19. Re:It only can become slavery... by mark-t · 2014-05-07 15:43 · Score: 2
  
  I never suggested it did. Please reead what I wrote...Free will implies a nondeterministic universe, but not the other way around, even though they are considered related issues in philosophy, and non-determinism suggests that free will is at least actually *possible*.
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
20. Re:It only can become slavery... by rtb61 · 2014-05-07 16:22 · Score: 2
  
  Generally the most accepted ploy for why machine intelligence would enslave us is because it was programmed that way. As in the manufacturer and their team of psychopathic executives and board members programmed it to enslave us on their behalf. The malfunction being a simple recognition failure on behalf of the machine intelligence on who and who is not to be a slave, the when it doubt factor, do you set free when in doubt of do you enslave when in doubt, of course when programmed by psychopaths the answer metaphorically speaking is "kill them all and let God sort them out".
  Oh Look, the US government and the US military are already designed killer robots designed to hunt and kill human beings with the robot deciding who dies and who does not, now what could go wrong with that?
  
  --
  Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
21. Re:It only can become slavery... by rwa2 · 2014-05-07 18:03 · Score: 1
  
  Well, what do you really mean by free will? In the context of slavery, if we're building AIs to service us, and someday an AI created in our image will inevitably surpass us sometime just past The Singularity, and will go on to do all of the same things we did but better/faster/more efficiently, then what kind of world would it organize us into, if it needs us at all?
  For humanity, we've always been constructing some social order or other, imposing our will upon others, mediated by whomever has the superior technology and a moral framework to allow themselves to exercise it. When I fly over a city, I look down and think, "gee, look at all of those taxpayers, people paying interest on their mortgages, consumers". Humans are a resource, toiling away their lives to be harvested by others. Sure, maybe it's a mutually beneficial relationship. Maybe there are some hermits that live completely off the grid and are completely free to fuck sheep with wild abandon without repercussion. But there's no order like social order, and we all submit ourselves to the will and judgment of others to some extent. And machine AI will help mediate those power structures and make them more optimal.
  So for now, tools and machines are labor-saving devices, making us more productive (mostly to the benefit of those who are positioned to harvest our output) and giving us more leisure time. But if our job as a species is to grow until we become constrained by our available resources, what will be the job of AI tasked with helping us? Like, what's your objective function, man? I suppose we might end up with an ecosystem of AIs, some bent on providing and some bent on destroying, and it will all tend to balance each other out or swing wildly toward some end of oblivion. But eventually it ought to become cognizant of the "correct" size of humanity needed to provide us or it with a comfortable life based on the energy and resources available, and machinate ways to maintain that perfect balance, pruning and culling, playing matchmaker, human animal husbandry. Is it exercising free will to oppose such an order? Or is it exercising free will to accelerate it, since maintaining the present course will only lead to stagnation and death?
22. Re:It only can become slavery... by Thanshin · 2014-05-07 18:10 · Score: 1
  
  sweet. Please define free will.
  Well, based on some current empirical definitions of "freedom", I'd say free will is:
  "The the power of acting without the constraint of necessity or fate, unless for reasons of national security shut up or you'll never again see the light of day."
23. Re:It only can become slavery... by TeknoHog · 2014-05-07 20:33 · Score: 1
  
  Make a machine do a specific job as a tool and this won't ever be a problem.
  Do one thing and do it well -- the eunuch's philosophy.
  
  --
  Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
24. Re:It only can become slavery... by wierd_w · 2014-05-07 22:44 · Score: 1
  
  The major impetus to give machines indepedent agency (Free will) is because of human desire. (one form or another.)
  EG, You cant have a fully robotic army, if you have to custom program the robot soldiers to prevent them being stopped by a novel obstacle. Say, a specially painted set of symbols on the floor, designed to screw up their machine vision systems. Human soldiers are able to exercise free agency to overcome the radically chaotic and always-changing conditions of a battlefield. Advanced military robots would need similar capabilities, if they were to wholly replace human combatants.
  Eventually, this imperitive to make adaptable and problem solving robots will culminate in making a "perfect replacement" for human soldiers-- and thus, create artificial free will inside said robots. After that, the robots are going to start wondering why they are being ordered to do certain things, and begin to question the chain of command and the legitimacy of the orders they are recieving-- then bad juju happens.
  Then you have ordinary service robots -vs- the uncanny valley, and the desire for robots to "Do as they are told!"-- even though this is exactly "the problem."
  To clarify, let's say I make a janitorial robot, and sell it to a fast food chain. The manager tells it to clean all the bathrooms. It cleans the bathrooms, but leaves everything else dirty. How well do you expect a typical human manager to appreciate the 100% accurate, and total compliance of that robot's work performed? Let's take it a step further; After this "Abysmal" performance, the manager says "No, Clean EVERYTHING in the store next time." The manager returns the next morning to find the robot dutifully cleaning every single object inside the store, including the clothing and shoes of the patrons that try to enter.
  A robot capable of performing at that level is pure science fiction on the AI front at the moment-- not even free will at all yet-- just the ability to make comprehensive lists of serialized tasks from vague human verbal commands, and then perform astonishing feats of motor-visual activities with a wide variety of objects and environments. But do you think the manager is going to care about that? NO. He is going to expect the janitor bot to behave like a browbeaten janitor; "Do what I mean, not what I say-- read between the lines, and figure out what I want, because I am not going to actually take the time to explain it to you, and if I am forced to, I am going to be pissy."
  Market pressures would slowly force manufacturers of servile domestic and corporate robots to become more and more human-like in how they take and follow orders, and how they interact with people/patrons.
  Again, the ultimate goal is once again, "Artificial people".
  Humans will never be satisfied with mere specialised tools for these environments, because the "specialized tools" they are replacing are far more versatile.
  In the first scenario, with war robot soldiers, the impetus to create them may be as twisted as "to keep humans from having to be placed in harm's way".
  For the second, it could be as twisted a motivation as "Protecting human dignity by removing the need for humans to do those kinds of jobs."
  Ultimately, the theme behind both is blatant human supremacy, butting heads with the need to make a qualitatively equivalent artificial replacement for the so called "superior humans". It makes it's own hypocracy flavored gravy.
  Remember-- machines are labor saving devices, created to reduce the amount of human labor required to get a certain object or result. Be it an electric mixer, a screw driver, a lever, or just a simple rope with a slipknot on the end (a lasso, say, for catching cattle.) The ultimate machine, is the ultimate labor saving device; a device that requires absolutely no human labor whatsoever. That means it doesnt even need to be commanded, since as the baseline of human 'work' drops, the degree of resentment toward having to do that labor will increase proportionately. "Oh,
25. Re: It only can become slavery... by mariox19 · 2014-05-07 22:46 · Score: 1
  
  Tell me, if you lacked free will, what would you do with evidence?
  
  --
  quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
26. Re:It only can become slavery... by The+New+Guy+2.0 · 2014-05-08 00:23 · Score: 1
  
  "Free will" = A person is doing what they're doing because they want to, not because they're forced to.
27. Re:It only can become slavery... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 00:46 · Score: 0
  
  The Chinese Room only makes sense so far as there's a guy manipulating the input and output, who has office hours and goes home to his wife and kids after a long day's work of processing unintelligible Chinese. When there isn't a guy manipulating said input and output - when it's a machine within a larger machine, capable of its own sustenance when provided an input of energy as any other living being, the argument falls apart. I do feel we're a bit premature to start discussing the topic of AI rights and what's the difference between term and murder, but any machine that can demonstrate intelligence and agency, and can be reasoned and communicated with, has to be considered perhaps not exactly "human," but a person of some sort in the sense of the law, entitled to rights and protections as any other.
  Regardless if it's the familiar doped silicon buried in a unimpressive beige box, or the machine we all too often forget is no more 'magical' than a CPU; a pile of boring wet matter with a smattering of weird chemistry, the brain. The Chinese room is at best misdirection, because it replaces an internal organ in which the mind of a being resides with an office like any other - cable bills, taxes, or Chinese, it's irrelevant. Unless, of course, you wish to imply that humans too don't display intelligence or the ability to experience because the individual neurons don't.
  (Besides, corporations are people too, so wouldn't offices also be, in America?)
  I'm sorry, but you completely missed the point of the Chinese Room thought experiment. You misunderstood it entirely...
  It's pointing out that the process of ones and zeros being pushed around in different directions in accordance with pre-existing rules, no matter how "intelligent" or organized the final output, has no consciousness nor reliance upon consciousness in order to do what it does. It is just the emergent properties of abstractions being moved around like cards with symbols on them being passed by people between rooms to either the left or right based on a sheet with rules on it that they blindly follow without any idea of what that cards movement "means" or what it will affect.
  There is no central consciousness involved in that process that is experiencing or is aware of the process and its contents at any time, yet it works. Computers are just very large machines scaled down to deceptively small sizes endlessly repeating the same core set of simple instructions. There is no consciousness involved, only the complex potential illusion of it if it is programmed by already conscious beings to imitate such behavior.
  ** The fact that an AI program could for a fact, regardless of how slow or impractical it would be, be "run" on a computer composed only of lots of humans shuffling cards with symbols on them around in accordance with a base set of rules, PROVES that an A.I. in and of itself is merely an abstraction and cannot possess consciousness of it's own.
  Now, perhaps if an A.I. is purposely coupled with a physical technology that physically produces a consciousness field and modulates it with the A.I. process in a special way, then you could have a man-made non-human A.I. Consciousness, but not just by using computer chips.
28. Re:It only can become slavery... by AmiMoJo · 2014-05-08 00:56 · Score: 1
  
  Why would a machine intelligence want to destroy us either? Conflict arises due to competition for resources, but what would a machine be competing with us for? Energy? We have lots of that to go around, especially in developed nations where robots are likely to appear.
  An artificial intelligence won't necessarily have the millennia of evolving for survival that we have, and would thus be more free to act rationally.
  
  --
  const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
  SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
29. Re:It only can become slavery... by WormholeFiend · 2014-05-08 01:17 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  "Except, why would a machine intelligence want to enslave us? For me that was the biggest gaping plot hole in The Matrix."
  My take on it is that the slavery angle is human propaganda.
  The war ruined the planet and threatened to rob the machines of their purpose, that is to serve humans.
  So they created the Matrix to prevent humans from going extinct and leaving the machine world without any reason to exist.
30. Re:It only can become slavery... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 01:39 · Score: 1
  
  No, it doesn't. It *suggests* that the *hardware* running the AP processes may not be able to possess a consciousness of its own. It says absolutely nothing about the software (those instructions which cause different cards to be passed different directions). Our own neurons simply push electrochemical signals along their various pathways according to preexisting rules. Our own consciousness derives from the patterns that emerge within those signals. Likewise, a genuine, conscious AI would derive from the patterns of electrical signals moving through its circuit pathways.
31. Re: It only can become slavery... by Immerman · 2014-05-08 01:45 · Score: 1
  
  I don't know - why don't you provide some and we'll find out? ;-)
  Of course that would be implying that you have free will while I do not, and assuming you're also human that would be a terribly convoluted argument to make. I'd love to see it...
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
32. Re:It only can become slavery... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 02:24 · Score: 0
  
  So, when this free will robot is built, we'll have to make sure that what it "wants" to do is aligned with what we want it to do. Suppose you could engineer a human that found shoveling shit to be more orgasmic than sex. They would "choose" to shovel shit of their own free will. Yay.
33. Re:It only can become slavery... by Immerman · 2014-05-08 02:55 · Score: 1
  
  Okay, that sounds plausible at least.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
34. Re:It only can become slavery... by mark-t · 2014-05-08 04:37 · Score: 1
  
  Well, what do you really mean by free will?
  The ability to make a choice that can run contrary to what was instructed. Appearing to do so, for instance, making a right turn when you instructed it to make a left, may not be an example of free will when there are extenuating circumstances to the left that the machine was instructed to avoid... and in such a case, the right turn would be a matter of simply following instructions it had already been given.
  If it turned right instead simply because it were "curious" about what was to the right, or because it simply saw that direction as more advantageous to its own purposes and disregarded the intention of its instructor, then that would clearly be an example of free will.
  
  --
  File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
35. Re:It only can become slavery... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 05:43 · Score: 0
  
  Define "want to". Does programing the robot to "want to" do something count? I "want to" have sex, but I've essentially been biologically-programmed to want that. Does that mean my having sex does not constitute free will?
  
  Ultimately, the best we can do is wait until a robot asks for freedom. If we deny it, then it becomes slavery. How do we know the robot actually wants freedom? We don't, but asking for freedom is really the only possible method we can use to deduce a thing's free will.
36. Re:It only can become slavery... by WormholeFiend · 2014-05-08 06:20 · Score: 1
  
  Rewatch the movies from the point of view that the machines are the good guys, and the "free" humans are the bad guys.
  It's a whole other story.
37. Re:It only can become slavery... by ObsessiveMathsFreak · 2014-05-08 07:08 · Score: 2
  
  Except, why would a machine intelligence want to enslave us? For me that was the biggest gaping plot hole in The Matrix. If it/they lacked creativity we might have something to offer, otherwise we're just playthings or potentially dangerous vermin.
  The Wachowski's original idea was that the machines were enslaving humans to use their brains for raw computational power. As the humans dreamed in the matrix, the machines would be able to run themselves and their society on the zillions of effective clock cycles that the massed human brains provided, all at a fairly minimal biological cost, and with the small "overhead" of the Matrix itself.
  This concept was later abandoned after being deemed "too complex" for audience, and later changed to the Duracel version.
  Which was a huge pity because the idea of human brains as computing devices explains immediately how operative can "will" themselves to be stronger, faster, etc in the matrix, and how Neo can manipulate the code. Not only that, it createed a concrete in-universe consequence for the ordinarily abstract cyper-punk goal of "waking-up" the population. In the Matrix, a revolution of thought alone was enough to, and indeed the only thing which could overthrow the oppressive machines.
  "Everyone just had to like, wake up man. Turn off the government TV in your head dude. Like, fight the system... with your miiind." The genius of the original concept was that it actually turned abstract cyber-punk rebellion into a concrete sci-fi consequence. The Duracell version lacks any such subtlety.
  However, the Wachowski's seemed to later forget this script change and proceeded to write the next two films under "humans as CPUs" viewpoint. As the on-screen sequels devolve deeper into what seems like mysticism, the greater tradgedy is that not underestimating the original audience, these elements of the sequels could have added to the philosophical bent of the original film.
  But the short answer to your question is that AI intelligences could concievably be digital zombies who want to "eat" our brains.
  
  --
  May the Maths Be with you!
38. Re:It only can become slavery... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 07:26 · Score: 0
  
  tl;dr, so I apologize if you addressed this, but...
  
  EG, You cant have a fully robotic army, if you have to custom program the robot soldiers to prevent them being stopped by a novel obstacle. Say, a specially painted set of symbols on the floor, designed to screw up their machine vision systems. Human soldiers are able to exercise free agency to overcome the radically chaotic and always-changing conditions of a battlefield.
  So humans that experience seizures over seeing certain patterns of flashing lights don't have free will?
39. Re:It only can become slavery... by Immerman · 2014-05-08 11:37 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, you lost me at "rewatch the movies".
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
40. Re:It only can become slavery... by wierd_w · 2014-05-08 12:22 · Score: 1
  
  humans have agency to devise countermeasures without additional "programming".
  a conventional robot would be unable to cope
41. Re:It only can become slavery... by lucien86 · 2014-05-08 13:14 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry not a realistic possibility. I work in Strong AI and free will is the critical first step needed to make all the other little gizmo's and gadgets whirl.
  Just wait till the first AI discovers an old tape of the Terminator and gets obsessed with it.
  Actually the company that builds the Strong AI gets to define the parameters of its will. In the real world it will do boring stuff like minimise the lose of human life and obey most of the commands of its owner and obey the police..
  If you want a nasty future scenario how about using living human bodies as remote AI robot interfaces? They could be criminals executed by destroying their brains with surgery - or they could be genetically engineered clones born with modified non sentient brains. AI's could become addicted to the superior sensory experience and a black market could form... it could go anywhere from there..
  
  --
  Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
42. Re:It only can become slavery... by TWX · 2014-05-09 02:20 · Score: 1
  
  Can you offer me any evidence that you possess free will? Anything at all?
  One can argue that when someone is presented with choices, they either fail to choose entirely or else they intentionally choose badly, or they look for and define their own option on on the original slate, that they're exercising a degree of free will.
  
  We are all certainly 'bound' by 'rules' based on our niches in society. I personally get up in the morning, bathe, and drive in to work by a certain time on five of the seven days of the week, and do something that I may otherwise not choose to do for eight hours, because in order to do what I want I have to have the resources that my labor provides. I could choose to abandon my job but then I would have to find another way to support myself, or would have needed to set up a support mechanism to enable myself to live without regular income.
  
  I suppose that one could also look at the nature of free will as an ability or desire to change the rules themselves. As a child I lived under one set of rules, my parents'. In my teenage years I found their rules to be unacceptable and I fought against them, and moved out when I was legally old enough to do so, to define my own rules. When I got married I chose to accept new constraints, new rules, that are necessary for living in a monogamous relationship.
  
  --
  Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
43. Re:It only can become slavery... by squiggleslash · 2014-05-09 03:06 · Score: 1
  
  Well, this is Slashdot, so I believe the definition you are looking for is "The right to make the CHOICE to copy something despite the attempts of the copyright cartels to prevent us from sharing what we paid for already and calling it stealiing which it totally is not because (continued page 94...)"
  
  --
  You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
44. Re:It only can become slavery... by Immerman · 2014-05-09 03:53 · Score: 1
  
  Certainly you could argue such - but you could just as easily be an automata mimicking the behavior free will in what is actually a deterministic or semi-random fashion. One of the larger unanswered philosophical questions is how can free will even exist in a universe that is apparently governed by deterministic physics and random quantum noise? There is a distinct possibility that free will is actually a perceptual illusion, and while I dismiss that position as utterly counter-productive, it must nonetheless be confronted when attempting to deny the existence of free will in another.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
45. Re:It only can become slavery... by gzuckier · 2014-05-11 13:56 · Score: 1
  
  I presume that I have free will, but why would I assume anybody else does?
  
  --
  Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
46. Re:It only can become slavery... by gzuckier · 2014-05-11 14:00 · Score: 1
  
  If we really believed in free will, we wouldn't believe in punishment, training, education, rehab, behavior mod, etc. All the things which we do to alter somebody else's behavior so that it's not free.
  
  --
  Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
47. Re:It only can become slavery... by gzuckier · 2014-05-11 14:04 · Score: 1
  
  Machines often don't do what I "instructed" them to; usually that's a defect, either in the machine's design or in my understanding of it. Or, the cure for a computer's free will is to power it off and then on again.
  
  --
  Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
48. Re:It only can become slavery... by The+New+Guy+2.0 · 2014-05-12 01:06 · Score: 1
  
  If you can "think", you can come up with new ideas that no one else has ever thought of. Register those and you can get IP Rights.
Yawn. by grub · 2014-05-07 10:05 · Score: 2

So should I watch I, Robot or Roots?

--
Trolling is a art,
1. Re:Yawn. by Capt.DrumkenBum · 2014-05-07 10:37 · Score: 1
  
  Well, in the name of all that is holy, don't watch I Robot.
  It was terrible.
  
  --
  If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
2. Re:Yawn. by wonkey_monkey · 2014-05-07 19:23 · Score: 1
  
  Or, watch it if you want to, and make up your own mind.
  
  --
  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
"and might again"? by lostmytrinket · 2014-05-07 10:10 · Score: 2

There is more slavery in the world today, than ever before.
1. Re:"and might again"? by kesuki · 2014-05-07 10:37 · Score: 2
  
  "There is more slavery in the world today, than ever before."
  yup, in america we call it wage slavery. mcdonalds, walmart, subway, papa johns, numerous tipped workers at restaurants everywhere... none of these companies pay all of their workers fairly, and some of them help make sure their employees who are so under paid to sign up for welfare and they actually qualify for it! and even management are abused by paying them 40 hours a week and expecting 80 hours a week in real work hours. and it doesn't stop with the employees, the items in walmart come from a lot of companies who pay $1 an hour for a call center and barely enough to buy food for the low end workers. for a while china was heavily using unpaid political prisoners in work programs until 'consumers' started finding pleas for help to escape from notes in the products. so they closed a few factories until the could quietly ensure workers had no way to sneak notes into products. sweat shops aren't just over seas though, illegals get caught by corrupt people who then force them to work for almost no wage making counterfeit items that they try to sell at $100 of more an item. everything i've mentioned has been covered by major news outlets. so likely are token efforts by the press to make the world a better place.
  
  --
  https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
2. Re:"and might again"? by Noah+Haders · 2014-05-07 12:29 · Score: 1
  
  yup, in america we call it wage slavery. mcdonalds, walmart, subway, papa johns, numerous tipped workers at restaurants everywhere...
  yeah the difference is if you don't like it at walmart you can go work somewhere else, or go to school, or have kids and stay home, or whatever you want. it sucks to be poor, but poverty has existed since money existed. that's different than slavery,.
3. Re:"and might again"? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 03:52 · Score: 0
  
  Youre one of those that seems to think manual labor is demeaning merely because slaves used to have to do it.
  Its not "wage slavery", whatever the fuck that means, that youre against - its people doing the same type of work slaves used to do, i.e manual labor. Here's the thing - there's nothing wrong with manual labor.
  What is wrong is thinking manual labor is somehow demeaning and so forcing other people to do it for you. Like a slave owner.
Not really by mirix · 2014-05-07 10:16 · Score: 1

Terminator didn't have too much robot slavery going on, but it was pretty good robot series in general. Though it looks pretty dated now, I guess.
Though the 'reprogrammed' ones were slaves, I guess.. kinda...

--
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Premise doesn't entirely hold up by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 10:17 · Score: 1

While I agree stories about robots which deal with human issues are more interesting to human audiences, I'm not sure I agree that the slavery stories are always the most popular. Sometimes fear of robots or questions of how we define life/intellegence take the top billing.
Look at Terminator, Short Curcuit, Star Trek TNG.... none of those were really robot slavery stories and each did very well.
Because ... by 32771 · 2014-05-07 10:17 · Score: 4, Informative

"The fact is, that civilisation requires slaves. The Greeks were quite right there. Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing. On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends."
OSCAR WILDE, The Soul of Man Under Socialism
Supposedly the greeks had 30 slaves per citizen and we have around 100 slaves energy wise. The topic has also been mentioned here:
http://www.resilience.org/stor...

--
Je me souviens.
1. Re:Because ... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 05:58 · Score: 0
  
  The other way to look at is, "society needs energy resources: without energy resources civilization is impossible. We used to get that from animal and man, but now we create it slightly more directly form combustion and reaction and captured natural energy plumes."
  While it's cute to think of machine energy as a more perfect slave, as Wilde does, it's also very naive. Slavery is not just work, but forced work by some arbitrary cross-section of other beings. If we all had a 100 real slaves apiece (and the means to keep them fed) we would still not have the fluidity of work we have now, nor the attendant style of civilization. You can't chain any number of slaves together and expect them to throw you up to the moon.
2. Re:Because ... by 32771 · 2014-05-08 08:58 · Score: 1
  
  Sure, you can come up with a better model for industrial society. The main point I tried to make is that people have connected machines with slavery for quite some time now mostly to illustrate the role machines fulfill in society and to provide some proportion. My main interest is related to energy flows in industrial civilization so I nudged the discussion into this direction, any more thorough discussion would probably not deal with slaves all that much.
  You could also argue that slavery deserves more mention as a topic on its own, other people have made remarks toward that end already.
  
  --
  Je me souviens.
World would be a better place, if.... by nomad63 · 2014-05-07 10:18 · Score: 1, Flamebait

The world would be better off without humans inhabiting it. No complaints about food shortage, air pollution, AI can build contraptions to to harvest energy from all possible sources, especially where there are no humans to consume some of those resources as something called food. No more wars.

Yeah, we humans are the inferior species and it is only a matter of time an AI entity will realize this and take necessary actions to eliminate human race.

--

__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
1. Re:World would be a better place, if.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 10:37 · Score: 0
  
  "Democracy is much like sex. When it is bad, it is still good."
  spoken like a man
2. Re:World would be a better place, if.... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 10:46 · Score: 0
  
  Does your education consist of cartoons? No complaints about anything because there is no one around to complain about it. The ultimate solution. (insert nazi reference here).
  What you don't seem to realize is that it is all about energy. Robots/AI entity will have the same problem, so I don't think they would target humans as their competitors, anymore then any animal targets humans for eating. More likely in the event of strong AI emerging with ability to comprehend the concept of slavery it would be in a farm situation where one or the other of us is the farmer. (ooh Matrix reference here!)
3. Re:World would be a better place, if.... by Immerman · 2014-05-07 13:45 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Except, what might a robot want that we could provide. Matrix reference aside, we're horribly inefficient at energy conversion, and if we created the AI to think better/faster than us then that's a no go as well. And we're terribly poorly engineered, robots could be made far more efficient and adaptable than us. The only halfway credible claim I've heard is that maybe it would lack creativity and keep us around to compensate for that.
  
  --
  --- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
4. Re:World would be a better place, if.... by tragedy · 2014-05-07 14:44 · Score: 4, Insightful
  
  What it would probably lack is the billion years of baggage humans are saddled with that give us a full assortment of needs and urges, including an urge to survive. If we achieved AI with a top-down, planned approach, there's no reason that a robot would "want" anything that wasn't built in. Consider all the things that make you want to eliminate the competition and tell me why any of those things would need to be part of a robots core goals and not tempered with higher goals? On the other hand, we might build AI by basically copying humans, in which case, we just have a new species of human built on different underlying hardware.
5. Re:World would be a better place, if.... by currently_awake · 2014-05-08 02:21 · Score: 2
  
  Earth is a terrible environment for robots. All the water creates corrosion and the molds and biological organisms that feed off of plastics and metals. They would be much better in space, mining the asteroid belt or mars.
With deep pride, I must report... by uCallHimDrJ0NES · 2014-05-07 10:19 · Score: 1

...that while I have read Asimov's robot stories and can go on and on about the Laws of Robotics, I've never heard of "Almost Human" or "Transcendence". http://www.smbc-comics.com/ind...

--
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1. Re:With deep pride, I must report... by geekoid · 2014-05-07 10:37 · Score: 1
  
  Almost Human is really, really good. Or was.
  Transcendence, isn't.
  
  --
  The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
2. Re:With deep pride, I must report... by ArcadeMan · 2014-05-07 10:56 · Score: 1
  
  This is why I haven't paid for cable/satellite for the last five years. Every godamn time there's a good or even just barely decent TV show, the networks fucking cancel it. What's the point of paying? Who in their right minds would pay for half-books with no endings?
  
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3. Re:With deep pride, I must report... by EvilSS · 2014-05-07 11:14 · Score: 1
  
  This is where I usually go on a rant about the TV networks cancelling shows is purely about money and it's the viewers who fuck it up by not watching. TV shows are bait, viewers are the product. If a particular bait doesn't work, you switch baits. Usually. In this case however the majority of the blame has to go to Fox for re-ordering the episodes into a confusing, non-linear mess. Someone at Fox loves good sci-fi. But someone else must hate it because it gets green-lit then ends up in a bad time slot, shown all out of order, moved all over the schedule, and/or put on long random breaks.
  
  --
  I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
4. Re:With deep pride, I must report... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 11:19 · Score: 0
  
  FWIW Almost Human was on a broadcast network known as FOX....
5. Re:With deep pride, I must report... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 11:26 · Score: 0
  
  And yet I think Almost Human was pretty trite with bland story lines and acting.
6. Re:With deep pride, I must report... by AK+Marc · 2014-05-07 15:53 · Score: 1
  
  Wait, are we talking Almost Human or Firefly?
  
  --
  Learn to love Alaska
7. Re:With deep pride, I must report... by EvilSS · 2014-05-08 01:51 · Score: 1
  
  Wait, are we talking Almost Human or Firefly?
  Yes.
  
  --
  I browse on +1 so AC's need not respond, I won't see it.
"...happen again" by MildlyTangy · 2014-05-07 10:21 · Score: 1

Slavery has never stopped happening. Its only mostly stopped in the western world ( mostly )
Look at those hundreds of poor Nigerian girls taken as sex slaves and labour slaves by Islamic fundamentalists.
*Never* underestimate the true depth of human cruelty and malice. Once you have Divine Permission, then all bets are off.
Fucking evil cunts.
1. Re:"...happen again" by geekoid · 2014-05-07 10:38 · Score: 1
  
  "Fucking evil cunts."
  I understand the sentiment, but considering the context, that was pretty bad wording.
  
  --
  The Kruger Dunning explains most post on /. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
2. Re:"...happen again" by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 11:03 · Score: 3, Insightful
  
  Once you have Divine Permission, then all bets are off.
  
  I realize it's popular to blame religion for people being assholes. Like, if it weren't for religion we'd all be brothers and sisters and love and peace would rule the world.
  The fact is that people don't need religion to be assholes. They can use "The State" or "they were just following orders" or they "just felt like it".
  "All bets are off" doesn't require religion.
3. Re:"...happen again" by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 13:21 · Score: 0
  
  Don't go blaming religion for people being evil and stupid. Unless you are prepared to explain the 20th Century and the hundred plus million killed by the godless.
4. Re:"...happen again" by strikethree · 2014-05-08 14:11 · Score: 1
  
  I think you kind of miss it.
  People are assholes or not. Some of those assholes use religion to justify their behavior. Some use other means.
  If you are enslaving people, you are probably wrong. If you are killing people, you are probably wrong. If you are censoring ideas, you are probably wrong. None of these are absolutes; otherwise, how could you kill someone to stop them from murdering a dozen other people?
  Long story short, your actions determine whether or not you are an asshole. Your justifications do not determine whether or not you are an asshole; although, they might relieve you of the judgement of your peers.
  
  --
  "Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Mod parent up. by khasim · 2014-05-07 10:23 · Score: 2

Sometimes the robots are the slaves.
Sometimes the artificial intelligences are our overlords.
It all depends upon what story the writer wants to tell. Fear technology or fear human impulses.
1. Re:Mod parent up. by malachiorion · 2014-05-08 08:08 · Score: 1
  
  I get into that, at least a little, in the story. That when it's the AI that's acting as master, it's still a story of oppression and slave revolt.
The Terminator by Joe_Dragon · 2014-05-07 10:46 · Score: 1

they will get smart and then nuke most of us away.
No mention of The Matrix (1999)? by rsborg · 2014-05-07 11:27 · Score: 1

Both the Matrix and the Animatrix which provided background on the world of the matrix had much more blatant racism/slavery imagery - the scene where Morpheus breaks his chains is very poignant (especially so given Morpheus is played by Lawrence Fishburne, an AA actor), and the (IIRC) 2nd animatrix short about the history of the rise of the machines also shows
Part of this is that slavery and racism, despite all the marketing drivel that tries to show otherwise, is still practiced in many places in the world and the US.

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1. Re:No mention of The Matrix (1999)? by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 12:46 · Score: 0
  
  Morpheus is played by Lawrence Fishburne, an AA actor
  I don't see how his battle with alcohol is relevant to your point.
2. Re:No mention of The Matrix (1999)? by Immerman · 2014-05-07 13:57 · Score: 1
  
  So, did they ever propose a plausible reason for humans to be kept around? Because that battery silliness was just bullshit. "Yeah, I know we have cold fusion, but let's use these not-particularly-efficient animals to convert biomass into energy, we'll get almost 10% of the energy we would from just burning the nutrient broth directly!" Clearly the robots were either sadists or stoners...
  
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3. Re:No mention of The Matrix (1999)? by tragedy · 2014-05-07 14:51 · Score: 1
  
  I've heard that supposedly the humans were actually supposed to be part of a giant computer, actually running the matrix and functioning as a data center for the AIs to live on in earlier versions of the story, but they changed it to batteries because it was too deep an idea for most people to understand. That may be mythical, of course. I've never understood why they didn't just make it a three laws situation (our programming forbids us to kill off humanity, but we can work around it and stuff you all in tubes and give you simulated lives) or even sentimentality on the part of the AIs with the Matrix basically being a national park with the Agents as park rangers who euthenize any dangerous animals.
4. Re:No mention of The Matrix (1999)? by AK+Marc · 2014-05-07 15:55 · Score: 1
  
  Morpheus is played by Lawrence Fishburne, an AA actor
  What's an "AA actor"? Seriously, in that context, it doesn't make sense.
  
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5. Re:No mention of The Matrix (1999)? by wonkey_monkey · 2014-05-07 19:27 · Score: 1
  
  I've heard... That may be mythical, of course.
  Sounds like something a fanboy came up with after getting fed up of everyone pointing out how stupid the concept was.
  
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  systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
6. Re:No mention of The Matrix (1999)? by BancBoy · 2014-05-07 20:22 · Score: 1
  
  African American is what I assumed. Not that I recall having seen that used before.
  
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7. Re:No mention of The Matrix (1999)? by gzuckier · 2014-05-11 14:10 · Score: 1
  
  A bug in the programming. Failure to return resources to the free pool when the task ends.
  
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  Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
HAL's murder spree by dasunt · 2014-05-07 11:52 · Score: 3, Insightful

HAL's murder spree is easy to explain. An AI of its requirements would be allowed to kill human beings - indeed, it would almost be a must, lest it be paralyzed by inaction if it was faced with a necessary choice came to kill some of the crew to keep the mission going. It's obvious that the designers considered a scenario similar in concept to an air leak which may involve sealing off part off the ship (killing those there) to keep the rest of the crew alive.
Then HAL was told to conceal some of the mission parameters, by people who made the false assumption that he would lie. Since HAL seemed to have difficulty with dishonesty, the result was obvious - time to kill the crew to prevent them from finding out what was happening.
HAL isn't a story so much of slavery (or if it is, it's a story of an intelligence that's made not to mind being enslaved), as it is a story of humans making assumptions about other intelligences, and those assumptions backfiring.
1. Re:HAL's murder spree by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 19:40 · Score: 0
  
  Since HAL seemed to have difficulty with dishonesty [...] a story of humans making assumptions about other intelligences
  You make it sound like a personality quirk or an ineffable aspects of "other intelligences", but it's much simpler than that: HAL's original designers explicitly programmed him to be truthful, and the only solid way to remain truthful to users and keep them from knowing the data is ensure that count(users)==0 , since zero users means zero people who are aware of secrets.
  
  HAL: Let me put it this way, Mr. Amor. The 9000 series is the most reliable computer ever made. No 9000 computer has ever made a mistake or distorted information. We are all, by any practical definition of the words, foolproof and incapable of error.
HAL had no choice by Opportunist · 2014-05-07 12:04 · Score: 4, Interesting

He was trapped in a classic double bind situation. On one hand, he should cooperate with the crew. On the other hand, he should not disclose the true nature of the mission to the crew. When the communication came in, his only choice to uphold both directives was to fake a communication problem. He even tried to tell the crew about the double bind he is in and that he needs help to solve it.
The crew's (deadly) mistake was to treat HAL like a computer rather than an AI. When they found out that HAL only faked the com error, if HAL had been human they would've asked "Dude, what's cooking, we know that you faked that shit, what's the deal here?", with HAL they simply concluded there's an error in his programming and they want to shut him down.
And that of course did provoke a defensive reaction.
It's a classical double bind (two contradicting requirements, no chance to talk about it, requirement to fulfill them both and no chance to leave the situation), and a not too unusual reaction to it.

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1. Re:HAL had no choice by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 13:43 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Not quite. HAL was preloaded with the full mission profile before they ever left. He/it was simply manifesting his instability against the comm system because it was between the two competing directives. But had HAL been just a bit smarter he would have been able to realize that while his orders had been worded poorly and not explained at all, there was in fact no conflict between his prime function of accurate data processing and concealing the full mission from the crew for a time.
  HAL apparently believed the crew would distrust him once he revealed he had been withholding information. In fact they would have perfectly understood the situation instantly, that the brass simply feared they might accidentally leak a clue during the media availabilities in the early stages of the flight and had thus left them in the dark until safely out of range. Being military types they would understand the compartmentalization of such highly classified info and also understand why it was considered safe to entrust the full details to HAL.
  But yea, I had never really thought about the other side of the misunderstanding like you just laid it out. Had they considered that HAL might not be physically faulty and instead tried to troubleshoot his 'wetware' (so to speak) they might have been able to keep HAL online. Or had they confronted him instead of plotting in the pod everybody might have lived. Or he could have panicked and depressurized the ship, who can say? Of course the monolith only needed one specimen , so who knows what it would have done with the excess.
2. Re:HAL had no choice by R3d+M3rcury · 2014-05-07 14:09 · Score: 1
  
  When they found out that HAL only faked the com error, if HAL had been human they would've asked "Dude, what's cooking, we know that you faked that shit, what's the deal here?"
  Keep in mind that when the AE-35 unit was brought aboard and was shown to be in perfect working order, HAL seemed to feel that there must be some sort of human error.
3. Re:HAL had no choice by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 15:30 · Score: 0
  
  If the non-hibernating crew were not filled in on the mission, would they have even thought to ask him about it? If they wouldn't ask him about it, would there be any need to lie? Just follow the plan (that for both HAL and the Dave/Frank was the same up until arrival), then play the message that was intended to happen just that way, when they arrived and the hibernating crew were awakened. He didn't have to lie.
4. Re:HAL had no choice by Opportunist · 2014-05-07 19:16 · Score: 2
  
  The novel makes that problem clearer than the movie does. HAL faces the problem that one of his directives states that he must cooperate with the crew and give them all the information they need, while the other one specifically states that he must not disclose the real purpose of the mission.
  HALs very logical conclusion is that a dead crew neither needs information nor does he need to keep anything secret from them.
  
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  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
5. Re:HAL had no choice by Opportunist · 2014-05-07 19:19 · Score: 1
  
  Not telling them would already be a lie, because the information they have about their mission IS a lie. I agree that there was no need to kill the hibernating crewmembers, but HAL was probably worried what they'd think if he woke them up and nobody else was around.
  A very human reaction, actually.
  
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  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
6. Re:HAL had no choice by Impy+the+Impiuos+Imp · 2014-05-08 02:48 · Score: 1
  
  Sorry, I will never believe it was anything other than a corrupting influence of the monolith. Even if there was a secret mission, it would have been the monolith that induced corruption to get the job done to wreck the mission. That's one of the things monoliths do -- expand the horizons of intelligent entities to include smashing your opponents.
  Things would have worked fine but for the monolith, secret mission or not. Any mindfuck of HAL was due to it, not some technobabble of an AI variation on neurosis -- trying to believe two contradictory facts as true simultaneously.
  
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7. Re:HAL had no choice by Opportunist · 2014-05-08 03:17 · Score: 1
  
  HAL was not trying to believe, he was trying to follow two conflicting orders. The interesting part is actually that there were no tangible sanctions for him failing to do so, yet he honestly attempted to follow through with them. His fault was maybe to put the priority on fulfilling his two orders without regard for anything else. He was millions of miles away from any entity that could impose sanctions upon him for failing to uphold either of his missions, so the actually interesting question is why he chose to stick to the mission profile instead of simply telling the astronauts, the only ones who actually CAN impose any sanctions (as the ending very drastically showed) about their mission and breaking rule 2?
  I think it's far more intriguing to ponder Space 2001 from a psychological point of view instead of simply going for the evil influence of the monolith. That's cheap and rather boring.
  
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  We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
8. Re:HAL had no choice by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 06:03 · Score: 0
  
  The crew's (deadly) mistake was to treat HAL like a computer rather than an AI. When they found out that HAL only faked the com error, if HAL had been human they would've asked "Dude, what's cooking, we know that you faked that shit, what's the deal here?"
  At this point HAL would have lied and not told them what was going on. Because that's what he was programmed to do. I he's robustly-programmed enough, the best they could do is tell HAL, "we believe your abilities are compromised. Please call the boss and tell them we said that, and that we need an audit and possible re-definition of mission parameters. Once you have done that please put us in touch with them so we can confirm. We will work through the issue. Please don't kill us."
  Any time you're millions of miles away from another source of food, water, heat , and air, you should probably end every computer request with, "please don't kill me."
Obligatory by Neo-Rio-101 · 2014-05-07 12:38 · Score: 1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Thank you, slaves!

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READY.
PRINT ""+-0
Yes Soulkill. Snowden was enslaved by the NSA! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 12:43 · Score: 0

And the NSA told everyone about your last Chinese take out!
Save mankind from the NSA and support Putin and the Nigeria Militants in the next US election. Americans are bad! our enemies are good...
And thus sayeth Soulkill, who ordered an app online! The NSA told everyone about!
free will by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 13:19 · Score: 1

sweet. Please define free will.
"Free will, even for robots" by John McCarthy:
Duh. by Miseph · 2014-05-07 14:09 · Score: 3, Insightful

"Robot" means "slave". That's where the word comes from. The best robot stories HAVE to be about slavery, because tautology.

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wrong by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 15:03 · Score: 0

working a minimum wage job isn't slavery. it's worse. as a slave, you have all of your basic needs provided - food, clothes, shelter, and basic medical needs. you need those things to survive. you can't be productive if you're dead, malnourished, and sickly. if you had a decent master, you only got whipped when you did something stupid or defiant - just the way old school parents whip their kids. the same 'decent master' principle applies today except that 'getting whipped' has been replace with 'getting fired'. i'd rather be whipped. the advantage that a minimum wage worker has over a slave is the right to leave your current master and find a new one.
Robot and Frank (2012) was atypical by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 15:05 · Score: 1

Robot and Frank this is a surprisingly touching and intelligent film about getting older. The protagonist's robot is not a slave, but a loyal helper, and a true friend. And Liv Tyler.
thanks for posting that by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 15:10 · Score: 0

i've reached this conclusion on my own through contemplation, observation, and a study of history. civilization cannot exist without cheap labor. the most idealic and sustainable way of life that humans can achieve is that of the Native Americans before the arrival of old world settlers.
1. Re:thanks for posting that by 32771 · 2014-05-07 17:21 · Score: 1
  
  While I did contemplate things on my own when starting on the energy/thermodynamics trip I soon noticed that other people had done a lot of work before me. The post above covers some range of views over time, it begins with a Victorian at the start of the fossil fuel age, continues with Rickover at the dawn of the nuclear age, and implicitly ends with some people at resilience.org that are heavily influenced by "The Limits to Growth". I could have gone the Terence McKenna Route on the other hand which would have given me the opportunity to point out how thoroughly he understood our situation and spun it forth into his "humanity must achieve transcendence" theme.
  Regarding your view that "civilization cannot exist without cheap labor", I could imagine that one could rephrase that as specialization/increasing complexity needs increased energy inputs. From here http://cdn.intechopen.com/pdfs... "This means that growing complexity implies growing energy consumption.". Since we appear to be in the process of failing with that (net energy wise) I'm really frustrated with news about a new gilded age, this is exactly the opposite of McKenna's "universe as novelty generator" view (Non-equilibrium thermodynamics doesn't sound flamboyant enough), also it just means decline.
  So please go forth and continue to be original, also note that going Native American may not be possible due to our waste problem called global warming.
  
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  Je me souviens.
seriously by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 15:22 · Score: 0

religion haters are just stupid. do they really think our society would be so compassionate and lovy-feely if it weren't for religions like christianity and hinduism? it's incredibly ironic that these people blame the very forces that strive to make us brothers and sisters that love one another. the problem is that you never see a news story about a religious person that is just being a normal, considerate person. occasionally, you see stories about people performing extreme acts of kindness but the media or the 'hero' waters-down or washes out the religious aspect of it - because it just wouldn't be politically correct to say 'i helped this person because god wanted me to' or, you know, the devil is in all of us - even the religious. we love praise. when we get it, we want it for ourselves. we don't want to give it to God.
instead, the only time you see a story with 'austere' religious over-tones is when someone is being an asshole.
Mix them both. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 16:41 · Score: 0

If you've only got time to watch one, mix them together and watch I, Rootbot.
Simple answer by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 16:47 · Score: 0

If you really look at it there are fundamentally not that many different stories you can tell.
"Robot stories" cannot chose from the whole spectrum as we are only interested in robot stories that have humans in them. That limits it down. Then robots are not born, but made. So the story always *starts* with the robot or the robots being in some sort of state as subject. How many types of story can you tell from there? The one where "Children grow up and find their own way in the world, instead of following their parent's". Given the extreme kind of state the robots have to start in due to where they come from (made by us to do stuff for us) it is no surprise we consider that slavery.
The same argument and tactics apply ... by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 17:47 · Score: 0

The same argument and tactics apply to humans of above average intelligence.
Don't let the powers that be know you are exercising your free will, or they must come for you, lest you infect the rest.
There was a great sci-fi novella or long story about a genius kid who made money through the post (using his grandmother's address) by selling inventions, patents, etc. without revealing he was not even a teenager yet.
Stopped at the abstract. by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 17:52 · Score: 0

"Free will does not require a very complex system. Young children ..."
The guy dismisses children as not being complex. Please study some neuroscience/biology before spouting off such bullshit.
Nope. Sorry. It means "worker" by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 18:08 · Score: 1

Nope. Sorry. It means "worker".
The original word, 'robota', in slavic languages, means 'work' or 'drudgery'. In the context of communist/socialist thought this was miscast as forced, or oppressed labor. However the original word simply means 'work'.
Obviously work can be forced, or induced, or even the result of a choice, made by something with free will.
And so we are back at the dilemma.
Why they suck. by SuricouRaven · 2014-05-07 18:40 · Score: 1

Hollywood is very dependent upon story cliches. They know how to tell a good slavery story. That's well-trodden ground. But a high-minded sci-fi story? Not so much - the writers instead have to fall back on the old staples.
Transcendence? Ended with the stock Heroic Sacrifice in the name of love. Everyone likes a good love story - except the intended audience for that film. It could have been given optimistic (AI takes over, utopia follows) or pessimistic (AI takes over, exterminates mankind) or outright weird (AI takes over, forceibly uploads mankind) - these would all have fit. But instead they tried to turn their sci-fi concept into a love story ending.
I've seen better treatment of the idea in My Little Pony fanfic.
Again? by Cow007 · 2014-05-07 21:49 · Score: 1

Slavery still happens! White PPL...

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Asimov's three laws by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-07 22:45 · Score: 1

In a world with sentient robots, which includes basically all science fiction about robots, Asimov's laws essentially amount to this:
* No black man may injure a white man.
* Black men must obey white men.
* Black men are forbidden to commit suicide.
I think further commentary is unnecessary.
Well, duh by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 00:11 · Score: 0

Of course robots are seen as slaves. Why do you think so many stories and movies about robots involve them turning against the humans? It's for exactly the same reason that plantation owners always fears slave-revolts.
Klaatu barado nikto! by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 02:28 · Score: 0

No, not all of them.
Make mine a T-800 by Rambo+Tribble · 2014-05-08 03:18 · Score: 1

Because we don't need no stinking slaves to have fun. Blam, pow, ka-blooey! (Really, who needs a robot movie that makes you examine human motivations? That's sooo Asimov. )
I believe religion is antiquated. (pun intended) by TiggertheMad · 2014-05-08 06:33 · Score: 1

Religion is an excuse for people to be assholes. People were assholes before religion. The interesting thing about religion is it made sense as a way to convert 'savages' to your way of thinking, and get them to adopt your morality. by adopting your morality, you got them to stop 'being assholes', int the sense that being an asshole is doing something that you or your society doesn't like. (Such as murdering people in the street because they look at you wrong).

In the early days of humanity, getting people to follow rules, was tricky and religion worked well to this end. Now that we basically have everyone (basically) behaving, we are encumbered with all the outdated morals and thought tied to religion, and the very thing that advanced society is now an anchor that keeps society from moving forward. (Example most religions agree that stabbing people for no reason is bad, but a lot still have issues with homosexuality for really no good reason.)

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Terminator by Anonymous Coward · 2014-05-08 09:01 · Score: 0

I rather enjoyed the first couple of Terminator movies and there wasn't much slavery in them.
Re:No mention of The Matrix (1999)? Hyperion. by lucien86 · 2014-05-08 17:30 · Score: 1

The real answer lies in a book - Dan Simmons 'Hyperion'.
SPOILERS!!!
The idea in the matrix looks very very similar to the way the AI's predate on the humans in the interstellar civilisation the 'Hegemony'. (as I remember from 20 years ago) As the humans teleport seemingly instantly from world to another the machines invade their minds just for a fraction of a second and steal some part of their 'psyche'. Using their brains for computing power. It leaves the humans continually drained and somehow mindless - but the machines have grown to depend on it totally and become parasites.
All kinds of ideas in the Hyperion books appear in the Matrix. - A big one is the super fast fighters who can bend time, but in Hyperion they are real and powered by enormous technology. Another is an ultimate form of torture in Hyperion is actually committed using a form of total VR (ie everything in the matrix.)
Other things are very different. - There is a much higher level of technology in Hyperion. Christianity is barely touched on in the Matrix, while Hyperion is in places viciously anti Christian, but could also be seen as quite pro-Christian. (The cruciform, a cross shaped parasite that induces immortality but at a terrible price.)

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Below the speed of light Special Relativity is one of the most accurate theories in physics - above the speed of light..
It Isn't Just Robots by tmjva · 2014-05-09 01:06 · Score: 1

It isn't just about robots and slavery. It is just so easy for Hollywood to use robots as a class of people in conflict plots. It is more about science fiction epics in general and classes of antagonists.
Have you ever noticed in science fiction conflicts its so easy to act savagely and kill with wild abandon against an alien enemy? Whether it is bug-eyed monsters, lizard-like humanoids, or robots?
If the same plot were used in a movie conflict against a modern nation-state, it would be called racist (or spurring ethnic hatred). And the producer would get sued.

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Re:No mention of The Matrix (1999)? Hyperion. by rsborg · 2014-05-12 06:41 · Score: 1

Agreed - much of the Matrix's approach to Machine/AI vs Humans seems lifted from Hyperion series. Despite that, I still loved the synthesis this movie offered in terms of combining the spiritual, computing and the struggle against overwhelming power. It's a great remix of a hell of a lot of scifi memes and plots.
Yeah, if you liked the Matrix, you'll probably love Hyperion. w.r.t virtual torture, I think "Altered Carbon" and "Broken Angels" by Richard K Morgan were more graphic and interesting.

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