Nicholas Carr of The Atlantic certainly seems to think so:

Their easy assumption that we’d all “be better off” if our brains were supplemented, or even replaced, by an artificial intelligence is unsettling. It suggests a belief that intelligence is the output of a mechanical process, a series of discrete steps that can be isolated, measured, and optimized. In Google’s world, the world we enter when we go online, there’s little place for the fuzziness of contemplation. Ambiguity is not an opening for insight but a bug to be fixed. The human brain is just an outdated computer that needs a faster processor and a bigger hard drive.

The idea that our minds should operate as high-speed data-processing machines is not only built into the workings of the Internet, it is the network’s reigning business model as well. The faster we surf across the Web—the more links we click and pages we view—the more opportunities Google and other companies gain to collect information about us and to feed us advertisements. Most of the proprietors of the commercial Internet have a financial stake in collecting the crumbs of data we leave behind as we flit from link to link—the more crumbs, the better. The last thing these companies want is to encourage leisurely reading or slow, concentrated thought. It’s in their economic interest to drive us to distraction.

I’d agree but I didn’t actually read the article, I just skimmed the first paragraph and clicked on something else….OMG J/K!!1111

Automated robots programmed to terminate human life are already in use, in the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as on the borders on many of the more powerful western nations. Thankfully, they still require an actual human to pull the trigger, but this is merely a technicality. US military leaders have already expressed their desire to have fully automated robot death squads, and are ready to put their money where their mouth is:

Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December. James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

However, like every other technological innovation of war, designed to be used against the “enemy”, its only a matter of time before that technology is turned against us. And when you’re talking about killer robots, things get dicey real fast:

Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. “I don’t know why that has not happened already,” he said.

But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines. “I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.

Scary shit man. 2029 isn’t all that far away. Hopefully John Connor’s still kicking it somewhere.

Back in 1989, a team of scientists from the University of Alberta–lead by Dr Jonathan Schaeffer–enlisted the help of the world’s top checkers players to create an artificial intelligence that would really, really own at checkers. They named it Chinook.

Three years after its conception, Chinook advanced to the finals of a human world checkers championship and lost. Two years later, in 1994, it became the first computer program to win any kind of human world championship. Now, in 2007, Chinook stands invinicible–at checkers–having figured out how to respond to the game’s 500 billion-BILLION (500,000,000,000,000,000,000) possible moves.

Chinook now contains all the information needed to predict the best move to play in every situation of a game. Even making no mistakes, the best an opponent taking on the programme could achieve would be a draw. [source]

I would like to be the first to acknowledge our new machine masters and let them know I’d have no problem betraying my inferior species should the need arise. I’ve seen Battlestar Galactica. I know what’s up. If you’re into futile exercises, feel free to challenge Chinook.

So some brainfarm in Korea have developed a robot for protecting school children. They apparently have never seen Robocop.

Korea: Ahead of the Game.

The Korean Times
By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter

Sophisticated security robots will be deployed in the near future to patrol schools around the clock to protect students from violence and other dangers.

DU Robo said Wednesday that the Seoul-based venture start-up company plans to begin a pilot run of the security robot, dubbed OFRO, in a middle school.

This is the first time in the world that a robot will be employed to guard an educational institution, according to DU Robo.

“We are set to check the viability of OFRO as a school robot at a middle school in southern Seoul this week along with KT Telecop,” DU Robo CEO Kang Jung-won said.

“After going through the feasibility test, we look to commercialize the feature-rich OFRO that retails at around $100,000 as a school guardian,” he said.

Affiliated with the country’s dominant fixed-line telecom company KT, KT Telecop offers security services based on landline telephone lines.

OFRO, which moves at a maximum speed of 5 kilometers per hour, can automatically patrol areas on pre-programmed maps or it can be manually controlled.

Equipped with a camera and a microphone, OFRO also provides visual files to officials of KT Telecop or teachers at schools on a real-time basis.

“One possible scenario is that OFRO will alert officials when it detects someone trying to seduce a student. Then, teachers will send a warning to the perpetrator through a loudspeaker,” Kang said.

“If the suspicious person refuses to comply with the instruction, KT Telecop guards will be sent there,” he said.