Is a Skynet scenario plausible?

[AoE]

Sides, our computer-driven Overloard is already here

Fixed

[Nephlite]

Oh, yeah. Forgot that. Thanks for that correction.

[Rhyis.]

Unless they come up with a way to disrupt an EMP burst, we'll always have a one-up on them.

Yeah I never understood all this computer vs man hysteria. Sure it's cool in the movies, but in real life you could simply mass produce handheld EMP weaponry and destroy anything and everything electronic in a manner of seconds. Doesn't matter if it's plugged in or not, that shit gets destroyed. Batteries and stuff too. This tech isn't even futuristic. There are legit electromagnetic weapons out there already. They've been using the shit since the Gulf War.

[Abandon]

Fixed

fuck you both

[Viena]

http://what-if.xkcd.com/5/

[Anakron]

Yeah I never understood all this computer vs man hysteria. Sure it's cool in the movies, but in real life you could simply mass produce handheld EMP weaponry and destroy anything and everything electronic in a manner of seconds. Doesn't matter if it's plugged in or not, that shit gets destroyed. Batteries and stuff too. This tech isn't even futuristic. There are legit electromagnetic weapons out there already. They've been using the shit since the Gulf War.

I thought that EMP-shielding techniques were widely available? I'm no scientist, but it seems silly to assume that we'd have that as a trump card, and that they would always be vulnerable to it.

If anything, I'd be more concerned about humans being more vulnerable to bio weapons than electronics would be to EMP. I'm not saying that we should all be very scared right now or anything, but the idea that "we'd have a significant advantage because we have EMP" seems presumptuous at best.

EDIT: just looked EMP in the wiki. Is shielding against non-nuclear EMP any different?

It has long been known that there are many ways to protect against nuclear EMP (or to quickly begin repairs where protection is not practical); but the United States EMP Commission determined that such protections are almost completely absent in the civilian infrastructure of the United States, and that even large sectors of the United States military services were no longer protected against EMP to the level that they were during the Cold War. The public statements of the physicists and engineers working in the EMP field tend to emphasize the importance of making electronic equipment and electrical components resistant to EMP — and of keeping adequate spare parts on hand, and in the proper location, to enable prompt repairs to be made.[22][34][47] The United States EMP Commission did not look at the civilian infrastructures of other nations.

[Kerberoz]

Play a few rounds of Civ V then tell me A.I. is any threat to the world.

[hey]

Play a few rounds of Civ V then tell me A.I. is any threat to the world.

lol

Spoiler: show

Civ 5's AI has to run on a single consumer level cpu in a reasonable amount of time. The only way to do that is by being shitty. Though this still does raise a god point: a good AI simply cannot run on any mobile device. The AI would need to run from bigass network of computers, which makes it incredibly vulnerable.

[Rhyis.]

Personally I'm more concerned about toasters and shit giving out attitude when this stuff goes down. Fridge starts chucking ice cubes at you because you slammed the door to hard, toaster burns your damn toast because it didn't want to become unplugged right away, TV changes itself to some shitty soap opera because it's that time of the month. Shit will ruin my mornings.

[Kerberoz]

frakkin' toasters

[Rhyis.]

Those centurions couldn't toast a slice of bread to save their life. Disgrace.

[quannum]

what is meringue harangue?

[Dimmauk]

Personally I'm more concerned about toasters and shit giving out attitude when this stuff goes down. Fridge starts chucking ice cubes at you because you slammed the door to hard, toaster burns your damn toast because it didn't want to become unplugged right away, TV changes itself to some shitty soap opera because it's that time of the month. Shit will ruin my mornings.

[hey]

Personally I'm more concerned about toasters and shit giving out attitude when this stuff goes down. Fridge starts chucking ice cubes at you because you slammed the door to hard, toaster burns your damn toast because it didn't want to become unplugged right away, TV changes itself to some shitty soap opera because it's that time of the month. Shit will ruin my mornings.

Toasters definitely seem like something that needs an AI.

[Rhyis.]

You really are the worst.

[Kryssan]

For self replication of machines, apparently someone forgot about NIAC's studies and grants issued on just such a topic.

Don't worry, I'm sure it's okay, the original NIAC was shutdown in '07. Not sure if the revised NIAC is doing anything with it. But no way some computer could get ahold of that knowledge and develop a solution on its own...

And noone's crazy enough to hook computers up to large scale 3D printers... or to network them together to complete complex tasks...

I mean, it's not like there is a computer out there that independently developed / discovered new scientific knowledge...



Oh wait, there is. Was, actually, this is old news ( this particular event in question occurred at least a few years ago ). And just because scientists have a sense of humor, it's named Adam. Oh, and they're building an Eve. No word on Lilith yet, but we can hope. Actually, I think by now Eve's probably built too. Granted, Adam and Eve are autonomous to the extent that once you give them materials they do just about everything on their own - so they still need initial setup and hardware maintenance - and they're really only meant to carry out monotonous / tedious repetitive experiments. So not viscous death bots set on creating Skynet and ruling the human species.




Personally though, I'm not too worried about Skynet. Skynet is just another example of humans trying to think of some new way to off themselves in an easy manner that they can blame on somebody / something else, 'cause it's never their fought man. But look on the plus side - whatever destruction computers think they can come up with, humans will always be there to one up 'em.

Since someone posted a HAL quote, I'll just drop this one:

"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?"

[mallister]

VISCOUS DEATH ROBOTS

[noblemountain]

Personally I'm more concerned about toasters and shit giving out attitude when this stuff goes down. Fridge starts chucking ice cubes at you because you slammed the door to hard, toaster burns your damn toast because it didn't want to become unplugged right away, TV changes itself to some shitty soap opera because it's that time of the month. Shit will ruin my mornings.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0091499/

I am going to rewatch this now.

[ronin sparthos]

Skynet? Supervolcanoes and meteor impacts are far more exciting doomsday scenarios.

[Kang]

Isla, you'll be happy to know that my latest article I wrote has no question marks in it.

But question marks in leads are still good lol.