What big business is eyeing up as the next big commercial opportunity: namely, autonomous robot technology that can operate in a human environment. Or to put it another way: Terminator. Although we’re repeatedly told that the robots are not Terminator; that they’re not going to kill us; or make us their slaves; that there is nothing to fear.

Google will build a fleet of robots capable of destroying mankind

Fukushima: Robot 'dies' 3 hours after entering Japan's radioactive reactor

After getting a patent for giving robots personalities last month, Google now wants to unleash an army of Rodney Dangerfield bots on the world. In a patent awarded today, the company outlines a system for “allocating tasks to a plurality of robotic devices The patent suggests that the robots could be controlled by a smartphone—Google’s mobile operating system is called Android, after all—with tasks doled out based on each robot’s ability to complete them. Someone could theoretically control the botswarm from anywhere in the world. As the patent puts it: “The plurality of robotic devices of the system may be configured to receive information from the computing component via the network associated with instructions for performing one or more tasks.”

Systems and methods for allocating tasks to a plurality of robotic devices

UK opposes international ban on developing 'killer robots

RT @SwiftOnSecurity: STOP KICKING ROBOT JESUS HIS MIND GETS BACKED UP

We could push for more automation, we could reduce the working week, and we could resist capitalism’s tendency to leave us as a surplus population. This sort of collective political project would see the newest wave of automation as an opportunity to drastically change our societies.

Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems (LAWS), often called “killer robots,” are theoretically able to target and fire with neither human supervision nor interference. Their development corresponds to a widespread and inevitable trend of military robotization.

RT @gibus: Y a pas de juge assez idiot Pour flinguer tout un pan de droits Laissant décider des robots À part bien sûr @ChTaubira