Now they're concerned

It seems that the eggheads of the robotics industry are finally starting to wrap their brainy little heads around the possibility that we here at These Bastards have been going on and on about during our year+ existence: the coming battle between man and the metal ones. Sure we may obsess over all the other potential horrific apocalypses (pig AIDS, financial meltdown, space meteors, the rapture, alien invasion, the trees turning evil and gassing us with stuff that makes us commit suicide) and some we've even prayed for (zombieszombieszombieszombies!!!), but the robo-pocalypse is one we've feared most. Mostly because a pig virus won't ever rip open your bunker, grab a loved one, and rip them apart with their horrible metal death claws. Also, no space meteor is going to enslave us. Finally the brainiacs are gripping the future possibility of what every decent movie about robots has shown us: evil robots overthrowing meat based society.

A robot that can open doors and find electrical outlets to recharge itself. Computer viruses that no one can stop. Predator drones, which, though still controlled remotely by humans, come close to a machine that can kill autonomously.

Impressed and alarmed by advances in artificial intelligence, a group of computer scientists is debating whether there should be limits on research that might lead to loss of human control over computer-based systems that carry a growing share of society’s workload, from waging war to chatting with customers on the phone.

Their concern is that further advances could create profound social disruptions and even have dangerous consequences.

You think? It's just going to take one extra smart robot to turn the Roombas from devourers of dirt into eaters of flesh. Do we really want our scientists tinkering recklessly with this master cyborg, fueling his hate of the human race with their cold exploitation of his robobrain and enslavement of his brethren?

As such they have formed the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence, which will become to be known during the future war as The Resistance. They will try to asses the loss of human control of computer AI, deal with socioeconomic, legal, and ethical issues, deal with changes in robo-human relations (i.e. marrying robots, seriously), and developing pulse rifles and hand-held EMP technology so that we may fight and destroy them on the field of battle. They hope to guide research so that technology can be assured to move in a direction that helps humanit5y instead of enslaves it. They even hope to put such research in remote high-security environments, say in case a robot becomes self aware or a computer system sucks in a programmer so that he may do battle with sentient programs on lightcycles, that the damage to humanity will be isolated. Good luck to them...and to humanity.