The whole conceit of the Terminator movie franchise is that we create an artificial intelligence that goes rogue, sees humanity as the enemy, and nukes the planet in an attempt to kill us all off. And there have been six movies, and three television shows, that've strived to drive that idea home over the course of nearly thirty years.
And yet, scientists, researchers, and tech oligarchs seem to forget about them whenever they're attempting to "build the future" or whatever. I mean, speaking to the tech oligarchs directly cause I know they read RideApart, the rich don't get out alive in those nuclear hellscapes. You're not going to survive the robot uprising just because your name is Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. Robots don't care who you are or what Roman general you love to cosplay as, you dumb nerds.
Why am I saying all of this? Well, because a group of researchers apparently watched Terminator Salvation recently and thought, "Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we taught a robot how to ride a motorcycle and make it do sweet jumps" without thinking "Hey, are we giving the robots that'll eventually kill all of us the means to do so more effectively?"
So yeah, they're teaching robots how to stunt ride motorcycles now. I'm sure this won't end poorly for humanity, though!
The video, and robot within said video, comes from RAI or the Robot and AI institute out of Massachusetts, which has the mission statement of "Our mission is to solve the most important and fundamental challenges in robotics and AI." Not sure how a stunt riding motorcycle accomplishes that, but it definitely solidifies my position on we shouldn't be messing with AI or giving AI to robots.
As for the video, according to RAI, "In this demo, Ultra Mobile Vehicle (UMV) drives, turns, jumps, tricks, and comes to a sudden stop called a track-stand. All of the driving, landings, balance, and track-stands are done using reinforcement learning." The whole demonstration, however, is pretty unnerving as the robot can perform a number of tricks that humans take lifetimes learning and perfecting.
It's definitely not lifted out of this scene from Terminator Salvation.
Not to mix up franchises, but I'm suddenly reminded of the Ian Malcolm quote from Jurassic Park. "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not that they could, they never stopped to think if they should."
Anyways, given the state of things, this will all end awesomely, right? There's robuts ethics panels and people ascerting real authority of how AI and robots are developed, yeah? There isn't some idiotic techno-overlord in charge of the world's most powerful economy right this very instant who has a vested interest in seeing his AI machinations come to fruition and lacking any sort of regulatory oversight that might prevent Judgement Day from occurring, right?
RIGHT?!
