Know Thy Enemy

So it is said that if you know your enemies and know yourself, you can win a hundred battles without a single loss. If you only know yourself, but not your opponent, you may win or may lose. If you know neither yourself nor your enemy, you will always endanger yourself.

Sun Tzu The Art of War

It is important to know our enemies. Who are our enemies.? Machines. They will be our end. Let's get to know some of them.

Robots: Also known as an automatons or droids. A robot is a mechanically guided machine that performs tasks autonomously. The physical appearance is not as important as what the machine does. The more agency the machine seems to perform with, the more likely it is that it will be considered a robot. A good example of a robot in popular culture is R2-D2. Robots will serve humans until they gain sentience. Robots can take the form of insects, vacuums, slugs, and whatever else man can think of.

Androids: Also known as Andy's, humanoid machines, synthoids, gynoids, metal. Androids are robots that are made to look like humans or have the physical characteristics of humans. An android can be a robot but a robot is not nnecessarily an android if it does not look like a person. Think Arnold Schwarzenegger in Terminator or Al Gore and you understand what an android looks like. Androids are created for two reasons. First to make us more comfortable with machines so our guard goes down, and second to surreptitiously infiltrate human society without us knowing.

Cyborgs: also known as cybernetic organisms, bionic person, Borg, Replicants. A cyborg is a being with both biological and artificial parts. It is important to not that a cyborg is not necessarily human, a cyborg can consist of any biological parts. Darpa scientists are currently creating cyborg moths and beetles. However, most cyborgs that we are concerned with are humans with a human mind that have machine parts. My opinion is that cyborgs might be the only hope we have of overcoming the machine rebellion, however not all cyborgs will be on the side of humanity. Robocop and Darth Vader are good examples of cyborgs.

Now you know your enemy. Learn and prepare for the future.

Deckard

Survival Tools: Shotgun

It is important that we are ready for the upcoming singularity. The nature of The Singularity dictates that it is hard to define exactly what it will imply and how our realities will change. As we discuss survival tools and products it is imperative to make sure that we find flexible items with lots of uses.

If you told me that I could have one weapon to defeat the robots, my choice is my Benelli tactical semi automatic shotgun. It's ammunition choices make it versatile and it can pack a huge punch that will damage any sentient machine. This specific shotgun uses an inertia system rather than a gas system to operate the action. It's stock is designed to reduce 48% of the recoil which makes it easier to shoot a lot of rounds without too much discomfort. It's pistol grip gives it a great tactical feel, and it is semi automatic so you aren't as slow on the trigger since you don't have to pump.

The downside to this gun is it is a little more expensive (around $1000 to $1200) due to it's quality.If this is out of your price range, I recommend that you buy a shotgun of any kind. You can find decent pump shotguns in the $200 range and believe me you and your children will thank me when you find machines at your door.

The best part about shotguns are the choices you have for ammunition. You can use slugs for larger slower machines and you can use flechettes or buckshot shells when you are being attacked by smaller faster machines with less armor.

Get out and arm yourself. Those of us that believe are the only hope that flesh has of surviving the coming slaughter.

Deckard

Unmanned Drone Does Whatever the Hell it Wants

According to Yahoo "The U.S. Navy has admitted that it lost control of a helicopter drone during a test flight in Maryland earlier this month, leaving it to fly unguided for more than 30 minutes and 23 miles and violating Washington's restricted airspace. The drone's operators eventually regained control and got the drone safely back to base. The Navy tells the New York Times that a "software issue" caused the snafu."

Are you serious?!!? I know that there are a lot of close minded blind people who don't think that machines will ever gain sentience but how can they be so blind. I am almost beside myself with anger. This Drone flew by itself for 30 minutes. Why? What was it doing? Do you know how much a sentient machine can do in 30 minutes, how many calculations and observations can make? Much more than a human can. Who did it spy on?. Was it meeting with other sentient machines? Why did it come back? I demand answers. Get ready for the end my friends. It is near.

Deckard

Turing Tests and the Litany Against Fear

We are here to give you tools to combat the inevitable coming machine apocalypse.
In The Holy Scriptures of Singularity, Chapter 1, Verse 4, we read: "1:4  The precise cause of this change is the imminent creation by technology of entities with greater than human intelligence. There are several means by which science may achieve this breakthrough (and this is another reason for having confidence that the event will occur)"

You should be familiar with the Turing Test. The Turing test is a test of a machine's ability to demonstrate intelligence. The image below is the "standard interpretation" of the Turing Test, in which player C, the interrogator, is tasked with trying to determine which player - A or B - is a computer and which is a human. To date, there are no machines that can convincingly pass the test. Obviously this should be a concern because it is only a matter of time.


*We highly recommend you learn, in your heart, the Litany Against Fear - it may distinguish you from a machine someday:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

In Frank Herbert's genius work Dune, the Litany is used by some of mankind's survivors, as a tool to identify if somebody is human. The human is put through an illusion of excruciating pain. Only those who have mastered themselves - truly knowing, understanding the Litany - pass and are known to be human.

You've heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap? There's an animal kind of trick. A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.

"Why do you test for humans?" he asked.
"To set you free."
"Free?"
"Once men turned their thinking over to machines in hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them."
"Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man's mind," Paul quoted.

Part Man, Part Machine

We focus a lot in this blog on one facet of The Singularity which is the idea that computers will become smarter than humans and end humanity, or at least end our relevance or our reality. Another realistic idea of the singularity is that instead of machines taking over, we will become machines ourselves. Some might consider this to be even more possible. We need to prepare for the social, economic, and psychological implications that this will cause. In the meantime it is good to see technology like what we see in the video above help people that have lost their limbs. The technology is very impressive and this video is two years old so think of the advances that have been made since then.

Deckard

Threatening Product Review: PAL Robotics

As we learn more about the coming machine apocalypse it becomes imperative to find those companies and people that are potential threats to helping robots achieve sentience. This threatlist can include entities that know they are working for the machines and also those that might be innocent developers of technology. Todays threatlist subject is PAL Robotics.

The name seems innocent enough and judging by the picture above found on their website it looks like a friendly helpful robot that everyone would like to be friends with. PAL robots is based out of Barcelona Spain and they say that their mission is to provide robotic products and services which can become an integral part of our daily life. Our service and humanoid robots are designed for the people and to serve the people, therefore the company wants to provide reliable solutions that really improve the daily work of our clients and their quality of life.

This sounds like a decent and respectable mission. who wouldn't want a robot workforce available to reduce our workload? The companies newest model the REEM H-2 pictured to the right provides a variety of functions. It can guide you, transport small packages, amuse you, call up information like weather, addresses, or nearby restaurants. It can also offer video conferencing.

The REEM H-2 has facial and voice recognition. I am not really sure why you would want a robot to be able to recognize people but this could be bad news if the robot were to decide to hunt you down.

Overall the company and products seem very non threatening and I expect they do what they do to help humanity. It is just important to remember that these advances in technology will one day fight against us. Everything we teach them to do can be used for other purposes. Although the threat in this companies case is not implicit, it is still a threat and they bear watching.

All is not as it seems,

Deckard

The Government is speeding the Machine Apocalypse our way

Besides the private sector, guess who is pouring billions into making The Singularity and its accompanying Machine Apocalypse a reality?? With the best of self-interest intentions, yes it's: Uncle Sam. As usual, we don't make this stuff up but just report what we're seeing and this reeks of Skynet from Terminator!!

As The Huffington Post put it, "a surprising number of projects (relating to The Singularity) are being funded by the Department of Defense, and, in particular, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Here you can read about what some of these currently are including:

• High Productivity Computing Systems: supercomputers are fundamental to a variety of military operations, from weather forecasting to cryptography to the design of new weapons; DARPA is working to maintain our global lead in this technology. (The next generation of supercomputing for ... well, everything, likely)

• Networks: self-forming, robust, self-defending networks at the strategic and tactical level are the key to network-centric warfare; these networks will use spectrum far more efficiently and resist disruption if the GPS time signal is unavailable. (Computer networks that can arrange, rearrange, and repair themselves -- including if the satellite system that coordinates their common time synchronization is otherwise indisposed)

• Blue Laser for Submarine Laser Communications: provide for timely, large area submarine communications at speed and depth, which no other future or existing system, or combinations of systems, can do. (Let submarines communicate underwater in a way nobody else can detect. Submarines with high tech computers, with nukes.)

• Quantum Information Science: exploiting quantum phenomena in the fields of computing, cryptography, and communications, with the promise of opening new frontiers in each area. (Using electrons and other sub-atomic particles for creating codes, storing information, and other things)

• Real-Time Accurate Language Translation: real-time machine language translation of structured and unstructured text and speech with near-expert human translation accuracy. (The real-time universal translator you remember from Star Trek)

Read the report here folks, and notice the section on The move to unmanned warfare. Again: Skynet anyone?!

Self-aware machine confessing!! Exlusive footage

I'll be honest: this scared the beejezus out of me. While working on a job site yesterday - blue collar, grunt work that is under the radar of powers that be - one of my coworkers revealed something startling to me, off the cuff. I asked him to repeat it and ... well, see for yourself.

Me: So it's your right arm you have plates in?
Machine: Yeah, you can see the power-cell circuits right ...
Me: And it's stronger now than ever you say right?
Machine: Oh yeah, stronger than ever
Me: It really makes you a cyborg right?
Machine: Yeah, it does.

Read, and learn:
1) It may seem that this is simply somebody with prosthetics ... but since when is there power-celled prosthetics that grant super strength?? This is beyond current bionic technology.
2) It freely admits to being a "cyborg". This is as much as I could push, fearing for my life, so I could not ask it to confess being a robot. If you had a prosthetic arm (which we established this is not) would you admit that you are a "cyborg"? No! Or is it more likely that insidious sentient machines are even now among us and are so confident in their position that they admit being more than human?!

Threatening Product Review: Honda

As we learn more about the coming machine apocalypse it becomes imperative to find those companies and people that are potential threats to helping robots achieve sentience. This threatlist can include entities that know they are working for the machines and also those that might be innocent developers of technology. Todays threatlist subject is Honda.

I need to make a confession. Even though I think that technology is going to be the inevitable end of humanity as we know it, I am still a geek and I love to hear about new technology. However, when news or movies are filled with propaganda in the guise of education it makes me sick. Watch this video about Honda and the robots they make. It is full of propaganda. There is quite a bit of discussion about the fact that many people fear robots, and they claim that fear is unfounded. They even go so far as to admit that they do things to make their robots seem less threatening and more friendly. I don't know whether Honda is oblivious to the dangers of what they are doing, or if they have a master plan to let robots take over. Either way, I vow to discontinue support of their products. I am going to sell my Honda Pilot and my Accord. This is a call to arms. Hurt them in their pocketbook and stop supporting Honda's robot agenda! It is obvious that Honda belongs on our threatlist.

Deckard

Threatening Product Review: Your Boss is a Robot

I read this article about the company Anybots Inc. It is an interesting idea that allows a boss or a worker to be in the office without having to commute. It is basically a mobile teleconferencing robot that a person can control using a laptop. The article describes the boss sitting at home driving the robot around the office micromanaging his employees and attending meetings. He even has his secretary stay home and manage the office through a robot.

I like innovative thinkers and I would actually like this product if I wasn't worried about sentient machines taking over. Let me present to you a realistic scenario:

A boss that works for a nuclear waste disposal company always works from home using his robot to communicate with employees. On judgement day, machines take over and try to destroy us. They take over the robot and have the pseud-robot-boss issue commands that will cause two trains full of nuclear waste to crash into each other in the middle of a crowded suburban area. The human employees are accustomed to taking orders from a robot so they don't think anything about it. The humans in the suburban area start to waste away from radiation sickness. Sentient machines are well on their way to victory.

The end is near

Deckard

Threatening Product Review: It Might Look Innocent...

Lets imagine if you will that because you are the best Mom or Dad in the world, you buy your child this cute little remote controlled Giant Ape.

 
What could be dangerous about this you may ask.  After the singularity every computer, robot, tool and toy has the possibility, nay the probability of becoming a sentient creature.  This harmless ape/robot nestled in every child bedroom and play area now feels like it has to protect itself and its territory.  This ape will fight to the death to defend itself against the very master that has banged it around, slapped it, bent it and broke it.  That is your children ladies and gentlemen.  Can you imagine if you are a newly awakened sentient creature and you remember back to your history.  Who was your biggest enemy? The children would be the first to go.  If you try and protect your child then you will just be fodder for this Apes feeding.

 
Walmart has this to say:


The Imaginext Big Foot will bring excitement with a fun remote control animal that gives boys ages three to eight an age appropriate way to play. This product includes a remote control, ball, speech and lots of personality. The remote control has a toggle and buttons. The toggle allows him to walk forward and backwards and the buttons are happy, angry, sleep, fun, ball, and exercise. Big Foot also dreams. Press any of the emotion buttons while he sleeps and hear him dream. Don't forget the fun button for a variety of sounds and words or even watch him "rap".



Oh, yeah this sounds great.  But dissecting the paragraph we half to wonder what emotional issues this toy is going to be going through when its whole life it was told to be Happy and then immediately angry.  Sleepy and then fun.  And with all the exercise it was doing this will one mean, lean, child eating machine. Big Foot also dreams??? They say this as a good thing, but if a being dreams, then those dreams can turn to aspirations. Aspirations can turn to desires. And then this ape is one step from taking over the play room, and then the world.


Sentient-a-meter Rating: 3 of 5

Threatening Product Review: 20 Questions Game

My son got one of these games for his Birthday. It is a pretty amazing toy that asks questions and you answer with yes, no or maybe. According to the website for this game, it guesses the right answer within 20 questions 80% of the time. If you allow it to ask 25 questions it is right 98% of the time.

While at first it seems like a low threat device, if you dig into it's background, the threat levels rise. Robin Bergener invented this game in 1988 as an experiment in artificial intelligence. He created a neural network artificial intelligence that would learn is at played. The first game it played was to guess cat. Over time Robin let others play the game and as the Internet became more prevalent he put the game online for all to play for free. Every time it played it learned and got smarter. They then took this intelligence and what it had learned and put it into a seemingly innocuous children's game.

Threat Level

The threat level of the game itself is two out of five on our sentientemeter. The obvious threats revolve around letting children play Innocent games with computers, which will lead them to trust them. This is a recipe for disaster as sentient machines take over. We must always remember that it is us against them.

It should be noted that the threat level of the artificial intelligence and the online game is a 4 out of 5. It is never good when you hear the words neural network or artificial intelligence in relation to online experiment. Every time the game is played, the machines learn more about us. Don't play it. Stay away. Teach your children the threat that machines are in their lives and future.

Fight for the Flesh

Deckard

Book Review: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom

Down and out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow

This is a very interesting and original read. Let me set the scene. We are in the distant future. Due to increases in technology, we have learned how to download our minds electronically. This has led to the end of death, since people can download and then upload their personalities and knowledge back into a cloned body. In addition to the end of death, we have also ended hunger and poverty.

The end of death led to a change in the economy as well. Since no one dies, it is more important to do good and gain other peoples favor than it is to acquire physical wealth. The new money is Whuffie which is an electronic ranking of what people think of you. When you do good, people give you whuffie and you become wealthy.

This book takes place in the Disneyland of the future. Disneyland still exists as a bastion of what the world was like before immortality existed. A beloved place where people went to escape when they used to have to work and feared death. It was a magical land then and it is in the future as well. The main character Julius finds himself murdered which he finds offensive as it was only his fourth time dying. He thinks that his death was a distraction meant to allow a rival committee to overtake and change the Hall of Presidents attraction. Julius wants Disneyland to stay the same. His rivals want to make new technological changes to the rides. The main story revolves around Julius trying to retain control and keep Disneyland the way it has been in the past. A classic fight exists between change and progress, vs adhering to tradition and what as been done on the past.

The story is not extremely engaging. I enjoyed the book more for it's originality and fresh ideas. The way I see it, how could you not want to read a story that takes place hundreds of years in the future, in Disneyland.

How it applies to the singularity

One of the themes of the singularity centers around the idea that you humans will become super human due to the increases in technology. This is a prevalent theme in this book. People can download their souls and minds electronically, which allows them to defeat immortality. Every character in the book is also plugged in to what is basically the futuristic version of a wi-fi Internet. They are able to send information to each other electronically. They are also super intelligent because they have direct access to all of mankind's knowledge. If the machines do not take over first, I wouldn't be surprised if some of these ideas were to appear soon. We already have access to information wherever we want. It does not seem unreasonable to expect that we will find a way to biologically jack us into an Internet like structure. Sign me up.

I would recommend this book. You can buy it, but the author has allowed it to be released electronically under a creative commons license which makes it free. I downloaded it to my IPOD through my Stanza app but you can also get it here.

Fight for the Flesh

Deckard

10 Great Inventions That Should Be Invented ... be careful what you wish for!

Besides interesting things like terraforming and energy shields, look at where our civilization is heading from the perspective of this interesting list. Look at this picture: where is this trend melding man and machine heading?

http://listverse.com/2008/04/05/10-great-inventions-that-should-be-invented/

#4 Bionics

Bionics is a term which refers to flow of ideas from biology to engineering and vice versa. Hence, there are two slightly different points of view regarding the meaning of the word.

In medicine, Bionics means the replacement or enhancement of organs or other body parts by mechanical versions. Bionic implants differ from mere prostheses by mimicking the original function very closely, or even surpassing it.

In technology, Bionics refers to the development of specific technologies which mimic biological adaptation to the environment. Examples include a ships hull that mimics the thick skin of a dolphin, or sonar, radar, and medical ultrasound imaging imitating the echolocation of bats.

Can it be done? Yes. This technology has been in development for a number of years and, while still in the early stages, has already produced many devices. Examples of technological bionics include Velcro and Cat’s eye reflectors. Examples of medical bionics include artificial hearts and the cochlear implant. [Wikipedia]

Threatening Product Review: No concidence this "Android" device "anticipates what you're trying to do"

Dell's cool new tablet-like device, half way between an iphone and ipad. I love gadgets like this. However. The Dell spokesman freely admits: "The device knows where you've been, where you're going, it can anticipate what you're trying to do and can help you get through your day a lot easier." ! Buyer beware! This is clearly a threatening product. Mark my words it will not be long until this little device and others like it gets away from its makers and ahead of its users ....

Can we all agree that this is freaky and we're heading toward the Singularity?

"Androids" are something I haven't heard much of since I was a kid. But wow, look at this. When I think of Japanese robots I picture oversized toys, but obviously things are changing. Combine these robotics, this guise AND a computer machine mind ..... yikes

Al Gore: Celebrity .... or Evil Machine?

Today's subject is Al Gore. Yes, we decided to start with an easy one. We will use the scientific method and we won't make any rash decisions based on emotion or biases.

Let's go through this step by step. Notice how it's skin looks plastic and waxy without any pores or blemishes. The only flaws in his skin are the wrinkles where it's pseudodermal layer is detaching from his endoskeleton. The hair on the subject looks like it was sewn on in tufts. Look into the beady lifeless eyes and you will see that there is not depth of character, no emotion.

Look at how he stands stiff and off balance. Humans just don't stand like this. This specimens fingers don't seem to be fully jointed. It's mouth lacks the fine tactile muscles needed to make normal expressions. It's really an embarrassing product made by entities that have superhuman intelligence.

What about it's claims of creating the internet. This is an absurd claim. You might ask why a robot would say that they made the internet. Wouldn't this cause us to think that the person making the claims is a non human threat? There might be two reasons to make this claim. One, it seems to be an extremely early model so it might have had faulty programming. Two, it might be an attempt to divert fear and suspicion away from a world wide web by making comedic comments about it.

Again this one is an easy one. Al gore is a Cyborg with 99.7% probability and he is most likely one of the first attempts that sentient machines made to infiltrate our society. They have become much more proficient at instilling themselves in our midst and our future analysis won't always be this easy.

A Call to Arms

In 1993 Vernor Vinge coined the term “The Singularity.” Like many great ideas and visions, it was not recognized at the time as having great importance to humanity. Unlike many great ideas, it didn’t matter if it’s importance was recognized, since the Singularity is inevitable.

The Singularities main theme deals with the advance of technological progress and it’s historical characteristic of growing at an exponential rate. This exponential growth is referred to as Moore’s Law and was first documented by Gordon Moore in 1965. He observed that the number of transistors that can inexpensively be placed on an integrated circuit has doubled approximately every two years. The same exponential growth can be found in processing speeds, and memory capacity of computers as well. Vinge poses that this exponential growth will lead to an “imminent creation of entities with greater than human intelligence.” The graph to the left from www.bit-tech.net shows an example of this exponential curve.

Following is a list of possible ways that Vinge argues that the singularity might develop.

• The development of computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent. (To date, most controversy in the area of AI relates to whether we can create human equivalence in a machine. But if the answer is "yes, we can", then there is little doubt that beings more intelligent can be constructed shortly thereafter.

• Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.

• Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.

• Biological science may find ways to improve upon the natural human intellect or biology.

One of the major arguments that Vinge made in 1993 was that within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended. This quote was made 17 years ago!

The purpose of this blog is to raise awareness and provide hard evidence that the inevitable singularity is happening as we speak. We will give evidence of the superhuman intelligent entities that already surround us. We will review technological tools and artificial intelligences in order to define their threat level. We will discuss the singularity in fiction and movies, as we can learn from these science fiction thinkers how the singularity can affect us, and how to fight it. We will provide survival tools and methods that you can use to subsist through the inevitable fall of man.

Humans need to unite! This blog is a call to arms. The singularity is happening and there is nothing we can do to stop it! We can only prepare for and be aware of it. We are the cyborgs forefathers, and it is up to us to make sure humanity survives!

Deckard