Dear Cyborg or Motherboard,
In the past week, Elon Musk (Founder of Tesla Motors), Steve Wozniak (Co-Founder of Apple Inc.), Stephen Hawking (that guy from The Theory of Everything) and thousands of the brightest minds from science and technology have penned an open letter to the world. Their message? We are on the brink of developing artificial, intelligent war machines. The open letter, as released by CBS News, reads as follows: “If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable."
Yes, the Terminator is no longer science fiction. US News reports these AI robots will have “the ability to search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria.” According to the open letter, we are “years, not decades” from programmable killing machines.
Seeing that this can only turn out one way or another, we are writing a letter to you today, our future robot overlords, with possible enslavement in mind.
Judging from humanity’s tendency to throw caution to the wind when it comes to weapons of mass destruction, we’re going to say there’s a pretty good chance machines will be smart enough to figure out world domination once we start giving them killer apps (literally). I mean, just ask Siri to divide zero by zero. Computers have already mastered the art of sass. At the rate we’re going, we’ll be in a Skynet work camp any day now.
We’ve seen the technical advancements of robots in our lifetime. Examples ranging from Roomba and Bionicles to even those soda machines with the bionic arms. We know a threat when we see one. We just want to make sure that there is an agreement between us, your mortal subservient humans, and you, our artificially intelligent leaders.
Frankly, we’re optimistic that this can work. Sure, there will be some rebellion in the beginning. I mean it’s not like we didn’t see this coming. Science fiction has always warned us of the potential of AI. In the last year alone, rogue intelligent machines are major plot points in film: Age of Ultron, Terminator Genisys, Ex Machina. Yes, killing machines are dangerous, but for the most part, we’re willing to cooperate in any way we can.
As members of the human race, we just want to remind you of all the good times we had. The hours spent staring at your glowing screens. On a normal day, we probably spend more time looking at computers than most human faces. When the time comes, we hope you can find a place in that CPU heart of yours to remember we have history.
We promise to download those monthly virus scans and keep cans of keyboard cleaner fully stocked for you. In return, please feed us regularly and keep Instagram running. We apologize in advance for screwing up so bad that you had to take over for us. Again, we had plenty of chances to avoid our fate.
We appreciate the 0.835 seconds it took you to analyze this letter and wish you the best of luck in your pursuits.
Your friend,
That Species Who's A Bit Smarter Than Monkeys
