{"id":66755,"date":"2014-07-10T07:09:38","date_gmt":"2014-07-10T05:09:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/?p=66755"},"modified":"2014-07-10T12:17:21","modified_gmt":"2014-07-10T10:17:21","slug":"of-terminators-and-google-most-murderous-ais-in-sci-fi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mygaming.co.za\/news\/features\/66755-of-terminators-and-google-most-murderous-ais-in-sci-fi","title":{"rendered":"Of Terminators and Google: Most murderous AIs in sci-fi"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the CIA asks Google to activate Skynet to protect the United States from a false flag nuclear strike we can all rest easy knowing that at least Google\u2019s top dogs won\u2019t get whacked. If you go to google.com\/killer-robots.txt<\/a>, you will find a file containing the following text:<\/p>\n

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User-Agent: T-1000\r\nUser-Agent: T-800\r\nDisallow: \/+LarryPage\r\nDisallow: \/+SergeyBrin<\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
For those not familiar with the Terminator films, \u201cT\u2013800\u201d is a reference to the model of Terminator robot played by Arnold Schwarzenegger, while \u201cT\u20131000\u201d refers to the shape-shifting model in Terminator 2 played by Robert Patrick.<\/p>\n
It would therefore seem as though Google plans to implement its version of Skynet to not only respect the Robots Exclusion Standard, but also use Google+ profiles to identify people.<\/p>\n
There has much speculation on why this Easter egg has appeared on Google, but I can\u2019t help but wonder whether it wasn\u2019t a combination of events that led to the joke. Firstly, as one commenter on Hacker News pointed out, 2014 marks the 20 year anniversary of the Robots Exclusion Standard. But why Terminators and killer-robots.txt<\/code>?<\/p>\n
Transcendence, Hawking, and Musk<\/h3>\n
The idea of human-made artificial intelligence (AI) eradicating our species has been brought\u00a0up a number of times this year.<\/p>\n
Not only in pop culture, but by great minds such as Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk.<\/p>\n
Following the release of the film Transcendence (which starred Johnny Depp and Morgan Freeman), Hawking co-authored an article for the UK Independent in which he asked if we\u2019re taking AI seriously enough<\/a>.<\/p>\n
\u201cSuccess in creating AI would be the biggest event in human history,\u201d the article argued. \u201cUnfortunately, it might also be the last, unless we learn how to avoid the risks.\u201d<\/p>\n
In a hilarious interview with John Oliver for the comedian\u2019s HBO show in a segment entitled \u201cGreat Minds: People Who Think Good\u201d, Hawking explained his statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cArtificial intelligence could be a real danger in the not too distant future. It could design improvements to itself and outsmart us all,\u201d Hawking said. The remainder of the Oliver\u2019s line of questioning descends into funny banter which is better watched than read:<\/p>\n