[ExI] malevolent machines

[Stathis Papaioannou]

On 9 April 2014 09:14, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com> wrote:

> 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
>

A machine will only do what it is programmed to do but it may be impossible
to predict what that will be, as is the case for humans, who also only do
what they are programmed to do.


-- 
Stathis Papaioannou
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