Bayesian Investor Blog

Ramblings of a somewhat libertarian stock market speculator

How to Survive a Robot Uprising

Posted by Peter on August 30, 2007
Posted in: Artificial Intelligence, Book Reviews, Humor.

Book review: How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion by Daniel H. Wilson
This book combines good analyses of recent robotics research with an understanding of movie scenarios about robot intentions (“how could millions of dollars of special effects lead us astray?”) to produce advice of unknown value about how humans might deal with any malicious robots of the next decade or two.
It focuses mainly on what an ordinary individual or small groups can do to save themselves or postpone their demise, and says little about whether a major uprising can be prevented.
The book’s style is somewhat like the Daily Show’s style, mixing a good deal of accurate reporting with occasional bits of obvious satire (“Robots have no emotions. Sensing your fear could make a robot jealous”), but it doesn’t quite attain the Daily Show’s entertainment value.
Its analyses of the weaknesses of current robot sensors and intelligence should make it required reading for any science fiction author or movie producer who wants to appear realistic (I haven’t been paying enough attention to those fields recently to know whether such people still exist). But it needs a bit of common sense to be used properly. It’s all too easy to imagine a gullible movie producer following its advice to have humans build a time machine and escape to the Cretaceous without pondering whether the robots will use similar time machines to follow them.

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