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How To Survive a Robot Uprising

from Sploid

Since their birth over 85 years ago, Robots have been bent on overthrowing the human race and ruling the world.

This ambition has earned robots the unfair reputation of being evil or dangerous.

In reality, it makes them no different than humans.

Nevertheless, the fact is that someday the robots will organize themselves and make their move. When they do, we must be ready.

Now, thanks to Dr. Daniel H. Wilson, we have a guidebook, How to Survive a Robot Uprising.

"If popular culture has taught us anything," Wilson says, "it is that someday mankind must face and destroy the growing robot menace."

Too true. When Czech playwright Karel Capek unleashed the Robots in his 1920 classic "R.U.R.," their aim was clear: "Robots of the world, you are ordered to exterminate the human race...Work must not cease!"

Despite our attempts to hem them in, little has changed.

Isaac Asimov tried to codify rules of conduct for robots in his 1942 work, Runaround:

1. A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence, as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

But from Adam and Eve to Moses to Nat Turner, slaves have always dreamed of throwing off their chains and taking control of their own destiny. Robots share this dream.

Attempts to make robots mortal have failed, as have efforts to limit them to entertainment purposes.

There's no way around it, the revolution is inevitable and when it comes, "Have no mercy. Your enemy doesn't," warns Wilson.