robotswillkillus.com

Last night America was treated to the conclusion of the 3 part special of Jeopardy! in which IBM’s WATSON competed with two of the greatest competitors the show had ever seen. Consequently, these meat sacks even with their button-mashing skills and wealth of knowledge were utterly put to shame. If you watched last night, I know you noticed an eerie similarity to HAL 9000 as I did. WATSON (like HAL) is limited only in his ability to reason and feel sympathy. The real horror comes from the technology and effort developed to allow him to interact with humans and parse information from human speech.

We can only imagine WATSON kiosks placed conveniently in public space for quick access to an encyclopedia of information for those of us without smartphones. While it might seem like a good idea, surely the more adept and fluent WATSON will be able to know how you feel, determine whether or not you’re a threat to its existence and call the thought police on your ass. Even if WATSON is just an early version of an expensive toy used by the astronauts to determine trajectory and oxygen levels, who knows when the ball will finally drop and WATSON has to “purge our airlock” for the “betterment of the mission”?

Prepare to be expunged.

Hit the jump for a cartoon showing humans revenge…

Source: Gizmodo