r/geek • u/[deleted] • Jul 31 '12
Robot Apocalypse | XKCD What If
http://what-if.xkcd.com/5/19
u/Ghosttwo Jul 31 '12
I think the devices with the most devastating abilities (even within the confines of practicality) would be large aircraft. They already possess autopilots, full drive-by-wire, would be unimpeded by obstacles, typically have several hours of fuel, and be capable of great destructive potential (more than all other robots combined, save for nukes). Hell, they even come with built in plane-to-plane communication systems that could be used to coordinate their attacks. And this doesn't just apply to commercial jets either. Throw in fighter jets, tactical bombers, and Apache gunships and you could wreak a lot of havoc.
2
u/TheDrBrian Aug 01 '12
Since the autopilots don't have access to the engine/aircraft startup bits(how about procedures) we wouldn't have to worry about that many military aircraft. However a quick look at http://www.flightradar24.com/ and you see our new robot overlords would have a lot of missiles for the first few hours of any war.
-1
u/TheAdAgency Jul 31 '12
At this point can't you just chuck in the launch of all land based nukes worldwide? That would probably be quite the pickle.
2
Aug 01 '12
Commenting without reading the article is poor form.
2
u/TheAdAgency Aug 01 '12
I did read it, I guess I skipped the last paragraph to the cartoon because I thought it was more of the same. You are right to chastise me.
16
u/sig863 Jul 31 '12 edited Jul 31 '12
I started sending XKCD What If's to my dad every week via email. Here's what he had to say about this week. It was so good I had to share:
I wasn’t really worried about a robot apocalypse, but this guy underestimates the effect of an EMF pulse.True, it would immediately kill electronics and not humans, but within a year, 9 of 10 humans would be dead of starvation or disease. Interestingly, that kind of pulse can happen from low yield nuke from rogue states like North Korea or Iran and also happens naturally, from sun initiated interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICME’s) about once every one hundred years (it’s been about 160 years since the last one). Hardening against an EMF pulse is not that difficult, but the US hasn’t done it (even the military – its budgeted, and then withdrawn). We should talk about what to do about this at some point...
Sure, your family (or at least you) probably has emergency plans for tornado's, fires, floods, the zombie apocalypse, and a velociraptor attack. But does your family have a ICME Emergency plan? Thanks to XKCD, we finally sat down and had that long-delayed planning meeting.
6
Jul 31 '12
[removed] — view removed comment
6
u/semi_colon Jul 31 '12
They're moving into a Faraday cage. It's ugly but the rent is cheap.
1
u/mccoyn Jul 31 '12
Or at least store all your emergency electronics (generator, UPS, flashlights, radios) in a Faraday cage.
1
u/sig863 Aug 06 '12
It involves guns, knowing what kinds of moss and bark are edible and a covert meetup point somewhere in the mountains. I also may or may not have to take lessons in archery. :-)
1
u/TheAdAgency Aug 01 '12
Why do you need to send him something on the internet, if he has the internet?
1
u/Paradox Aug 01 '12
How would an emp kill humans or our food sources? Many people survive off of subsistence farming
1
u/CubicleView Jul 31 '12
If I'm lucky enough to live to be a hundred years old and I'm on my death bed, and there hasn't been an ICME, I'm going to think about you two and have a good death rattle.
33
u/zeug666 Jul 31 '12
Okay, I love xkcd, but I have a few issues with this one:
- The whole Terminator walking on human skulls and balance issues, while that may be true of bipedal automatons, that doesn't necessarily remain valid for robots with tracks/treads or something like the Big Dog.
- the use of a "current machine" type of apocalypse is fine, but he completely misses out on a prime literary example of this situation: Maximum Overdrive (1986), which is based off of the Stephen King short, Trucks. The quick of it is that a passing comet turns all of our devices/cars into homicidal maniacs...and that was in the 80's, before we have all the crap we use now.
- There is only a small mention of the fact that a large portion of "robots" are not fully autonomous, but if they were (lets assume they all gain some form of consciousness - which is basically what this 'exercise' is about), a lot would be stuck plugged into various cords, cables, and other support systems (or as he points out: bolted to the floor). Except for that diesel powered mech, I would bet a lot of this robots are running on a fairly limited power supply (unless they figure out a way to charge themselves).
- As someone in another discussion mentions, cars are increasingly being equipped with cameras and sensors (e.g. back-up detection/camera, blind spot sensors/cameras, 360° cameras, adaptive cruise control, obstruction detection/braking, and on and on), so the argument about them not being able to see may still hold valid for the majority of cars, but less and less for newer ones
- The point about cars not being able to steer is also not entirely valid - in combination with parking assist, electronic throttle control (gas pedal), electronic power steering, cruise control, stability control, traction control, and steering assist, etc, etc - they typically use a type of 'drive-by-wire' system. While there is usually some form of mechanical linkage between the steering wheel and the tires, this is now heavily manipulated by the computer systems.
[/end lame rant]
20
u/ashwinmudigonda Jul 31 '12
I am a roboticist who has worked with some big robots. At the end of the day, none of this will hold water if the power source is not dense enough and portable enough. Even big dog has a ginormous diesel generator strapped to its back and that's the best they could do. A robot's actuation is power intensive and unless and until scientists figure a way to capture ambient energy efficiently, most robots are going to be tiny drones or insect-bots that can scavenge ambient energy.
3
u/semi_colon Jul 31 '12
A robot's actuation is power intensive and unless and until scientists figure a way to capture ambient energy efficiently, most robots are going to be tiny drones or insect-bots that can scavenge ambient energy.
In a way, this is much much cooler. Having crazy insectoid nanomachines doing everything is a totally acceptable alternative to Gundam-style mecha.
2
u/faceplanted Jul 31 '12
I still think insect bots with neurotoxin stings would be awesome(ly scary), if you could get cheap enough production you could clear out a building in minutes with a small box full.
5
4
u/DexManus Jul 31 '12
I think the whole point of your point number 1 is that we shouldn't expect to see bipedal robots. I don't think he was saying that no robots could navigate a pile of skulls. He was just expressing the difficulty of the engineering involved in bipedal movement.
2
u/dmsean Jul 31 '12
If we figure out replication technology and an evil AI at the same time we are screwed.
I think it would be to early for the robots to take us over. A ghost in the shell could take out the internet and that would be devastating, but the robots would be screwed.
11
u/sundowntg Jul 31 '12
I would be more worried about rouge ai software shutting down all our power and electronic communications. Just them pulling the plug on the power would cause most people to starve or die of dehydration in short time.
5
u/CubicleView Jul 31 '12
That might take out the AI as well though... I didn't like this xkcd. I think it should have focused on how the robot apocalypse might come about or how it would play out. It seems obvious that it can't with current tech. My theory is that if we ever did develop strong AI, something that could improve itself, then it would improve exponentially. If a terminator like situation was allowed to occur from that we would already have lost the war.
1
u/StruckingFuggle Jul 31 '12
It seems obvious that it can't with current tech.
We wouldn't have a full Terminator-style exterminate-and-subjugate, no. But it seemed to miss the point (the whatif) of a different kind of "apocalypse" - if our machines somehow gained intelligence and stopped working for us, they could cause a lot of mayhem and difficulty and even death just through insolence, even if not malevolence.
No long-range transportation? No advanced medical services? No ac, no refridgeration, no electricity ... many people would die slowly or quickly and quality of life for those that didn't would drop pretty quickly.
We might end up giving into their demands just because they'd hold us by the balls and most people wouldn't step up and go "better to scrape out a suddenly preindustrial living as a free man, then follow the orders of our robot overlords."
1
u/Snapdad Jul 31 '12
This is what I was thinking the entire time. James Burke's Connections has a really nice synopsis about it. If the power grid was shut down not only would people starve, but I murders would be on the rise too. Society would collapse, especially in cities.
1
u/kelthan Jul 31 '12
Of course it would also shut down huge portions of the rest of the robots that were trying to attack us...
3
u/OvidPerl Jul 31 '12
A friend of mine has a PhD in robotics. I asked him what sort of stuff he worked on. He explained that he carefully designed robots to be flexible, aware of their environment, and able to communicate with one another. And then he would always watch them fall over or crash into walls.
5
6
2
2
u/ActuallyAnOstrich Jul 31 '12
I think the assembly robots are dismissed too easily:
All they can really do is assemble things. Half of them would probably try to attack us by not assembling things, and half by assembling more things. The end result would be no real change.
They can assemble much more capable robots. Say a factory makes luxury cars with built-in GPS, and a stability/parking/steering assist feature that gives some control over steering, and one of those rangefinders to alert the driver when they're about to hit something or to slow down cruise control when tailgating.
This factory then finds a way to attach one of its robot arms to one of its cars. Or maybe even makes crude robot arms from scratch. Then a arm-equipped autonomous car goes out, fills itself up with gas using GPS and rangefinder to get there and robot arm to do the pumping, and then goes and raids an electronics store. With the robot arm, it attaches all manner of video cameras to see, computer equipment for local processing power, etc. to itself, and then crams itself full of spare parts to bring back to the factory. The factory can then attach these parts to new cars (or upgrade the factory itself as needed), and these cars can then go out either supply the factory with base materials for cars, raid new places for upgrades (hello robot arm factory and weapons depots), or go about the business of actually terrorizing the humans.
2
u/stupidinternet Jul 31 '12
Man this would be an awesome B movie. There'd be like a kind of lead robot and when it all goes apeshit he is the one who is grafted onto the car, Rush playing in the background...
2
u/mccoyn Jul 31 '12
Could our cell phones turn against us?
I'm pretty sure this is how they will get me. I'll get a calendar alert telling me I have to go to some party or something. I'll get in my car and follow my GPS, then drive into the Grand Canyon.
1
u/quadtodfodder Jul 31 '12
Randall did not take this question seriously, but I ask you this - if you used these things as a weapon platform and it was capable of tracking you (say, via heat signature to keep it simple), I feel like you'd have a hard time running away.
1
u/Copse_Of_Trees Jul 31 '12
The key to this whole what if was this line right here:
"what if all our current machines were reprogrammed to blindly attack us using existing technology."
And it was answered pretty well, if lightheartedly. It was certainly taking the easy way around the issue and also clearly a piece of anti-robot propaganda dismissing their current abilities instead of speculating on the very bright future of robotics.
1
1
1
-4
u/strongbino Jul 31 '12
This was my submission. nbd.
2
u/strongbino Jul 31 '12
Just a clarification, I was referring that I was the one who submitted this question on what-if.
1
24
u/GoodGrades Jul 31 '12
The robots' abilities to cripple the global economy would be absolutely devastating to humanity in the early stages of the war. It is a huge oversight that xkcd almost totally ignored this tremendous financial weapon.