Each week when I gather all these stories of robots, I find there are a fair number that seek to reassure us that the “coming robot revolution” will be joyful and jolly:
Disney builds a jolly, one-legged hopping robot
Watch A Plucky Little Robot That Wants to Play
Watch spiderbots weave a hammock-like web
Iron Man offers to voice Mark Zuckerberg’s real-life Jarvis AI
Or that robots will work in the service of social justice and safety:
The Blind Have High Hopes for Self-Driving Cars
How a Drone Photo on Twitter Led to the Amazing Rescue of a Man and Dog From a Flooded Home
But there’s often the tinge of a threat, that these “intelligent” machines will surpass humans’ intelligence, that they will be intelligent but with a certain kind of incredibly inhumane ethics:
Watch Charlie Rose Interview a Robot
What Happens When You Give an AI a Working Memory?
The Recipe for the Perfect Robot Surgeon
Artificial Intelligence Takes a Trip on the London Underground
UMA unveils Maine’s first drone piloting course
MUSK: may I present...my AI robot
— Blupman (@blippoblappo) October 11, 2016
ROBOT: BLM is a terrorist org
MUSK: oh no
ROBOT: women shouldnt vote
MUSK: forgive me
ROBOT: die, SJW scum pic.twitter.com/fS1hzjA4F3
And then there are robots as a “clear and present danger”:
Pentagon Confronts a New Threat From ISIS: Exploding Drones
Self-Driving Mercedes Will Be Programmed To Sacrifice Pedestrians To Save The Driver