[ExI] malevolent machines

[William Flynn Wallace]

We all know that all of our machines are out to get us and frustrate us in
various ways, but is it really possible?  In scifi there are dozens of
books about entire machine cultures which, of course, are the enemies of
humans and maybe all living things.

Unless there is something really important that I don't know about
computers, it seems to me that having a machine 'wake up' like Mike in
Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, is just absurd.  It does what it
is programmed to do and cannot do anything else.  Any other function is
just some sort of mystical belief that is paradoxically held by hard
scientists.  Comments?  billw
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