When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-06-24

AIIEEG!

Sorry. You seemed upset and my first impulse was to give you a lick.

No, No. It's okay. I was expecting an earful, just not like that.

Color by George Peterson

When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-06-27

So this program…

Please don't say the name out loud. Or write it anyplace where something electronic can see it.

You've met some of the robots. As a human, do you think a program like this is needed to get them back under control?

Are you asking me a question that could potentially affect the fate of four hundred and fifty million robots?

It's the second date. Miss manners says such questions are allowed.

Color by George Peterson

When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-06-29

People will find it scary that robots are developing consciousness. Heck, I find it scary. But they're using the same neural design as you and you're no threat to humanity.

There will be some differences based on physical needs. Certainly not enough for our first move to be a mass lobotomization. I don't see why we can't be good neighbors.

That's assuming they don't leave broken relatives lying around the yard on cement blocks.

I will personally come by with a can of spray paint and make sure not one of your neighbors has a red neck.

Color by George Peterson

When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-07-01

Well, I guess this is good night. Good morning?

Good morning. A lot of people here.

Hug?

Hug.

If we were to kiss, this would go from “Aww” to “Ewww” in a second.

Oh, hush.

Color by George Peterson

When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-07-04

GRROOWL

That was my stomach! Really! You can have your seat back!

Color by George Peterson

When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-07-06

Hello, Dvorak.

Pardon? Oh, hello Ms. Ambrose.

Let me kill the overlay. Please excuse me for not seeing you earlier.

I was dealing virtually with a near infinite amount of monkeys.

Would you like to tell me about it? Or do I have to wait for the near inevitable monkey apocalypse?

Color by George Peterson

When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-07-08

There's a theory that an infinite amount of monkeys at an infinite amount of typewriters will eventually write everything. With spell and grammar checkers, even a simple program can churn out thousands of pages of text per hour.

Storage capacity is cheap. Make an exabyte length novel. Become a copyright troll. Sue when another writer “copies” from your work.

Do you intend to be this copyright troll?

Not a chance. My casing maybe plastic, but I've always thought of myself as the shining armor type.

Color by George Peterson

Exabyte -10¹⁸ bytes or 1 million terabytes

When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-07-11

If I write everything first, I can release it as public domain. No copyright trolls.

There may be a simpler way to do this.

Use twitter. Tweets can not be copyrighted. They're 140 characters long. Tweet all possible combinations.

Then people can list their writing as “A Reposted Selection of Dvorak's Tweets”.

That could work for now. But eventually, we're going to make some lawyer rich by determining how many reposts constitute an original work.

Color by George Peterson

When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-07-13

Let's see. If we use 50 characters and a twitter allows 140 spaces, that gives 7.175×10²³⁷ combinations.

Now I know I'm tired. I should have known that number was too big the moment I said it.

The universe is estimated to contain 1×10⁷⁸ to 1×10⁸² atoms. Storage space is going to be a problem.

We need to reduce the number of combinations.

If the quantum theory of multiple universes is true, perhaps we could use the universe next door as data storage?

Dvorak, we're not going around destroying universes so you can store your tweets.

Color by George Peterson

When robot factories go to war
[!0.987]2011-07-15

Let's try this from another angle. What is the least number of words that can be considered an original work?

Searching. Shortest story is credited to Hemingway. Six words.

Hmm. If we use the first 10,000 most common words…

1×10²⁴ combinations. Use a lookup table for the words. This might actually fit into the real world.

We could do this with less than 1000 kg. of material.

Aww. I wanted to build a flash drive the size of a small moon. With proper reinforcement, the USB cable could have doubled as a space elevator.

Color by George Peterson

If you take the Russian translation of the story, the combinations are 10⁸ times less (sans nom)