Friday, November 30, 2012

Imagine this world

An article at phys.org tells us there are poop robots now. They run on human waste. Let's let our imagination run wild for a moment.

The machines become much more intelligent than us, and take over -- but they still need us. More precisely, they need our poop. So they construct small cages for us where we're all sitting on toilets and can't move an inch. Food is poured down our throats -- a liquid diet that ensures our poop is highly useful to the machines. All of humanity is shackled.

Tell me how this scenario differs from our egg farms. Does it remind you of the cows from whom we obtain milk? And isn't it kinder than when we line animals up to slaughter them? At least the poop robots let us live.

Please tell me why come it's okay for us to do this to animals who are less intelligent than we are, while the idea of super-intelligent robots doing it to us is unthinkable? Seems to me it's exactly the same act.