One heated issue cropped up here with some very intelligently represented views on the "Robots Taking over the World" fear. I think it's a substantiated fear. The ethics of AI (artificial intelligence) is discussed in this article, as is the future of AI with thoughts wandering here, there and everywhere on the future of the world. The concern is that AI is going to eventually dominate the world such that human beings are not going to be the only intelligent species on the planet. You know, this train of thought is a stem from the root thought that worry is paramount because in all the movies the robots are always killing people. The old humans against the bot story.

There are so many places I can go with this, but what I really need to address is the issue of AI creatures being considered species. Webster defines species as 'a group of animals or plants smaller than a genus, belonging to that genus, but differing from in some details; a kind, sort, or form'. Obviously actual human beings fall into this category in the animal kingdom. Authors here are so wrapped up in the AI notion that they have forgotten that while robots differ in details of kind, sort, or form, they fit into neither the animal nor the plant kingdoms.

And it is not just these authors. I find it funny how this critical element is forgotten in many discussions on artificial intelligence. A commenter on this post also worried about how evolution was going to have an effect on AI beings. Well again, robots are neither plants nor animals, and evolution only happens among members of the animal or plant kingdoms. Let's remember that robots are inanimate objects given animation by their creator. This is a simulation of sorts of how the human species started. But folks, the operative words here are simulation and artificial. Let's stay focused on that. Oh, and the movies? Aren't they just artificial representations of non-fiction? I can appreciate the theoretical concern of robots taking over the world, but I don't see it happening any time soon.