• Question: Do you think robots will ever get out of control, especially if they can communicate with each other?

    Asked by Amrit to Siobhan, Iulia, Katie, Mateusz, Ollie on 10 Mar 2017. This question was also asked by SomebodyOnceToldMe, 476rbth39, Callum___2002, WisemanFC, I_can't_think_of_one.
    • Photo: Siobhan Duncan

      Siobhan Duncan answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      This is a really good question.

      I work with the types of robots that hopefully will communicate as part of a team of thousands or even millions! They are often the bad guys in Science fiction, like the borg in star trek or replicators in star gate.

      But one thing that engineers have been doing well for a long time now, is safety engineering and safety in how you control your robot. Potentially dangerous things like the software in a nuclear power station or the electronics that controls an airplane are designed and tested to be very very safe.

      However Artificial Intelligence is still very new, so it is important for engineers to keep safety in mind when we create new robots and new technologies.

      A good thing to remember though, is that robots don’t like to get wet, so if they did rise up tomorrow, we could just have a water fight and we would win 🙂

      Hope this answers your questions, please ask more if you have any worries or any more questions.
      Siobhan

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      Not at this stage, anyway 🙂 We do have robots doing specific tasks, even working in teams, like in a factory to produce a car. We do make sure, however, that they are thoroughly tested. Even if they bug out on us, there are off switches everywhere a robot works, so people can turn them off , and see what went wrong.

      It’s hard to say for a far-reaching future, however. There is a lot of research going on in artificial intelligence safety right now to make sure that autonomous robots (that can think for themselves) never turn on us, or are at least easily disabled.

      Not to worry, however: as long as you don’t see robots walking the streets and being at least as able as humans – you are safe by and large 🙂

    • Photo: Iulia Motoc

      Iulia Motoc answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      I don’t think that will happen anytime soon. The robots will actually have to be intelligent and we are very far away from that. We will always make sure that if we will figure out how to make robots intelligent, there will always be a way to control them.

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