Seriously. Robots need love too! If we’re going to survive the coming Toaster Uprising, then we have to love our robots. We have to instill them with love. It’s really what Ray Kurtzweil is talking about in The Singularity Is Coming. If we’re going to have a Singularity, it has to be a human singularity. The robots/ AIs/superior intelligences need to have compassion and beauty and yes, hearts.
This is all stimulated by a song by Dan Mangan, which is a great singalong. But, there’s a much darker interpretation of his fabulous composition. It’s about what we do to ourselves — what those in control do to those who don’t have it — a huge waste of human potential. (Yes, this is a beautiful satire. And please, tell me if you can spot the Leonard Cohen reference.)
We are not robots. And someday, when we have robots, we shouldn’t treat them like robots. But enough of my rambling, here’s the song:
You can find Dan’s site here, and his MySpace page has a nice clean version of the song you can listen to. The lyrics can be found here, so you can sing along to the whole thing. (But listen to it a couple of times first.)
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Buy my latest novel, which features a fridge that wants to be a robot, and it definitely needs a little TLC! Available in all formats in all the usual places online :
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