SWARM ROBOTICS (AI)
People have been working on artificial intelligence for a while, but the hip new thing in AI is called swarm robotics, which you can tell is
super-intense simply by the name. If you think it sounds like something that comes out of, well a video game or Big Hero 6,
you wouldn't be far off. Scientists are now taking what they know about biological systems like bees and ants and putting the same kind of hive
mentality into physical robots. The idea behind building swarms of robots is that basically they can act exactly like the Zerg we see in Starcraft.
Swarm robotics is all about scale, creating huge numbers of simple robots that can do two or three basic things and receive information
from each other or from an overarching control signal that's operated by a real person.
The swarm mentality keeps them all on task doing whatever we want. Instead of a single robot making a couple simple decisions, the group of
robots can now make really complex decisions and this yields a lot of really cool and also a lot of really scary possibilities.
We could produce robots to do the jobs that are really dangerous now like mining deep underground where it's too risky to send people.
We can send them into storms where they could give us data; we can send them to Mars where they can make the hard choices
just like humans do. You can also use them though, like it's shown in the game. Instead of risking tons of human lives trying to take over a city or sending
waves of soldiers out on military expeditions, you could send a swarm of robots. Based on the hive-mind interactions, they know when to switch
weapons or tactics, when to chase down the enemy, or even when to retreat. The Navy is already running tests on swarm robots who can run up to an enemy
ship, completely surround it, then take it down all at once without any humans on board.
The technology is real and it shows real potential, but it's also really terrifying.
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