Robots Will Take Over The World

Thank you for posting your opening argument.I believe that unless there is a catastrophic event that throws us back to the stone-age, such as a thermonuclear war, Robots will indeed take over the world, and I believe there are two separate ways this could happen.Both these ideas are based on the fact that technology is advancing exponentially. The so-called Moore's Law describes the exponential improvement of technology and this is a phenomenon that has been observed for decades.Today's smart-phones for example are thousand of times smaller, ten thousand times cheaper and a thousand times more powerful than the first super-computers we built some 60 years ago. That is a 10000000000-fold improvement within a few decades.Technology grows exponentially because it feeds on itself. The new technology is used to build the next one. Which brings us to my first argument.Mechanical Robots Will Take Over the World For years scientist have been struggling to create artificial intelligence. We are not there yet, but the time will soon come where a machine will have the same brain power as a human being. Intelligence is often described using several indicators, including the abilities for abstract thought, understanding, communication, reasoning, learning, planning and problem solving. Computers today are already beating humans in some tasks and we are currently improving them. Human intelligence is limited by our biological make-up. A human brain has a certain weight, a certain density of synopsis and a certain potential for growth, which cannot be exceeded because after some growth during childhood and puberty, our mental ability peaks and starts declining.A computer though does not have the same limitations, it can be upgraded and updated. We can connect two computers and make one out of it. More interesting, a computer works in a similar way as human brains do. Everything we can perceive, being sound, light or touch, is nothing else than electrical impulses that are registered by our nervous system and transmitted to the brain. A computer works in a similar way. Now my opponent argues that the only way to prevent robots from taking over the world, is by not allowing them the ability to think freely and free will. The problem with this idea is that it presupposed our ability to negate the machine such characteristic. The ever increasing technological advances will soon allow us to build a machine that is self-aware, and since this machine is not limited to the biological structure of a human brain, as soon as it's ability exceeds human intelligence, we will have lost control over it.A self-counscious computer which is more intelligent that humans will be able to outpace us within a short amount of time. Since technology grows exponentially, the machine will soon learn to reprogram itself to make itself even more intelligent and then build the next generation of machine which is even more intelligent and so forth. Within a very short period of time, a machine that is possibly 10,000 times more intelligent than us will be there, and will probably be able to take over the world. The question of weather they will do so violently is of course open, however, if you think about most humans act towards intelligent creatures such as insects or flies, it is probably safe to assume that such a machine would not really care about us, in the same way that we just crush a bug and don't feel bad about it because we believe we are so much superior.This view of the world is a little dystopian, but there is of course an other way that Robots could take over the World, which brings me to my second point.Humans will become Robots As I wrote before, we are currently experiencing a huge improvement in technological advances, and we are just at the beginning of it. The human race has been evolving for hundred of thousands of years, but we have been "technologically advanced" for only less than a hundred, which means there is still a lot that we don't know and a lot of room for improvement.We have just started to explore the real of Nanotechnology, which is of course the study of manipulating matter on an atomic or molecular level. There is no reason to doubt that nanotechnology will soon be advanced enough to be used in the medical field, which will allow us to fight diseases and death itself. With the help of nanotechnology we will be able to operate and replace not organs, but single cells and manipulate the DNA itself. Further down the road we will be able to do even more. A nano-technologically engineered blood-cell for example, which can carry more oxygen than a biological blood cell and can be inserted into our body could allow us to run faster, dive for hours, supply our brains with more oxygen and so forth. Nano-technologycally enhanced muscles could make us stronger and more resistant to accidents and nano-surgeons could repair cells. Furthermore, we will also be able to enhance our brains with nano-technology. Once we fully understand how the different parts of the brain work and interact with each other, which we already partially do, we will be able to increase the number of synopsis in our brains or replace them with better, more efficient artificial ones. This of course opens the door to the study of memory and learning process, which would allow us to basically upload knowledge and information directly into our brains, in the same way that we upload information on a computer today. Within a very short period of time, we will have evolved into human-machine hybrids, which will live longer and be way more intelligent that regular humans. The next step in the evolutionary ladder is of course to become more and more artificial and enhanced.Humans who will not subject themselves to those improvements will become less and less and eventually be in such an evolutionary disadvantage that will allow to the new breed of human robots to take over the world.Robotics is the next natural step in the evolutionary process. In the same way that Homo Sapiens Sapiens has taken over the world, machines will in the future become the new rulers. It's inevitable.