"You cannot play God then wash your hands of the things
that you've created. Sooner or later, the day comes when you
can't hide from the things that you've done anymore."
(Adama, Battlestar Galactica)
AI and Robotics are not new. For many years, centuries even,
humanity has been fascinated with the concept of non-human
intelligence. The idea of inanimate objects becoming conscious,
behaving like humans, or being sufficiently skilled to perform
tasks ordinarily performed by humans can be traced back to Homer
and Plato and, in more recent years, to people such as Karel
Ĉapek, Issac Asimov, Alan Turing, Philip K Dick, Arthur C
Clarke and Iain M. Banks.
It is only recently, however, that "the dream is finally
arriving" (Bill Gates) and the building blocks for this
type of technology – increased processing power at reduced
charges, better sensors, better algorithms and programming, and
vast amounts of data – have become sufficiently developed to
become of practical
