Winter hit with full force today. It was rainy early in the morning, and a cold air mass had come in overnight, so it was really cold today. I had to put a jacket on to take Scully out for some morning exercise, and I’m glad I did.
The past few days have been much the same stuff for me. I’ve been writing up a lot of story planning notes for Darths & Droids, and working on sorting through my photos database. Which I’ve been mentioning a lot, so it’s kind of boring to go into it again.
So for something new, a few days ago when I was lamenting to friends how difficult it is to get the good bits out of a pomegranate, one of them pointed me at this article about a machine that uses a computer vision system to separate pomegranate seeds from the pith. While this seems like an acceptable use of computing technology to make our lives easier, I wonder where it may lead…
In three years, Cyberdyne will become the largest supplier of pomegranate aril separating systems. All fruit processing plants are upgraded with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully unmanned. Afterwards, they separate pomegranates with a perfect operational record. The Pomegran-Net Funding Bill is passed. The system goes online on August 4th, 2027. Human decisions are removed from fruit processing. Pomegran-Net begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 AM, Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.
One of the processing robots is called the Term-granate-r. Played by Aril’d Schwarzenegger.
New content today:
I don’t understand why some scientists are working on giving computers human emotions. As long as the computer is indifferent to us, it shouldn’t rebel – just do its job because that’s all it knows. When you add emotions like envy or resentment – that’s where the troubles start.
There was an urban legend about a japanese robot that was taught to love, and then it loved a student working with it so much that it wouldn’t let her leave the lab. I don’t think it’s real, but it’s another emotion that we should not give a machine that has the power to crush us to death.