Technological Singularity.

Technology has progressed a lot in the past 10 to 20 years. You may not notice but technology has been developing at an almost exponential rate. Before computers used to take up a whole entire rooms but now the computer fit easily and comfortably in your pocket. We have more powerful computers today in our pockets then what the spacecraft that landed on the moon had. Some people may wonder where technology is now leaving to, and frankly we just don't know for sure. But if I had to guess I would say we're moving from an age of computing to the age of robots and AI.

Some may not know it right now but we already use robots in everyday life. Robots are used in assembling products such as cars, and are used to speed up the production of other manufactured products. These are all controlled by programs that have been programmed to tell the robot what task it should do. The only way but it could hurt you if you stopped in the way of what it's doing. Even then their safety measures designed to shut down the robot in case of that happening. What you also might not know about robots are currently being used in militaries around the world. The most commonly used robots in battlefields are a big gun strapped to a set of treads. They are controlled by operator with a set of controls on them away from the battlefield. They often have a camera so the operator can be even farther away. There was even robots using in WWII. Germans experimented with putting high explosives on a little robot and then driving it remotely.  

Computers are getting very fast, faster than you might think. Though a normal computer might not have the best computing power, there are supercomputers being used to run massive simulations such as world weather. One of the best constructed computing devices that we know, for size and ability, is our own brains. We’ve been studying our brains, and trying to design computers based on that. Research isn’t too far, but some people have made some breakthroughs, though nowhere near the same, but have made brain like chips with massive amounts of computing power compared to anything else we have.

We already have some basic AI’s, and it might be in your pocket right now. On your phone, you might have a “personal assistant” called Siri or Google Now. These programs are able to detect when you talk, and the understand what you’ve said, do the said task, and say a response.  Relative to movie level AI, this is rudimentary. But we’ve created something that’s able to understand our speaking.

So we have a few things right now. Basic motor functions of a robot, super computers that are on the way, and software that is able to communicate and understand us. Now just think on what would happen if we hit that supercomputer level processing. We’re not to far off from self thinking programs, and with a brain like or possibly even better computing power, we’re in a dangerous situation potentially.