HOWTO survive a robot uprising (just add water)

Randall "XKCD" Munroe's "What If?" site continues to shine -- and possibly even to outshine his most excellent webcomic. This week, Randall (whose background is in robotics), looks at what would happen in a robot uprising. He's rather sanguine about this, given the general uselessness of robots in the field.

Those robots lucky enough to have limbs that can operate a doorknob, or to have the door left open for them, would have to contend with deceptively tricky rubber thresholds before they could get into the hallway...
Hours later, most of them would be found in nearby bathrooms, trying desperately to exterminate what they have identified as a human overlord but is actually a paper towel dispenser...
Battlebots, on the face of it, seem like they’d be among the most dangerous robo-soldiers. But it’s hard to feel threatened by something that you can evade by sitting on the kitchen counter and destroy by letting the sink overflow.

Robot Apocalypse

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: Funny • Gadgets • happy mutants • robots • science fiction • ZOMGWEREALLGONNADIERUNHIDE

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ADM

That reminds me of this short, but compelling, documentary about an actual robot uprising that occurred back in the year 2000:

https://vimeo.com/46796178
Conan Librarian

Thats cute, but your forgetting the death from above, the drones that are already killing hundred’s maybe even thousands of people per year. All thanks to government immunity.
- flosofl
  
  He mentions drones, but you go ahead and insert your agenda here.
  - Conan Librarian
    
    Oh yea, my evil “maybe you shouldn’t be indiscriminately bombing people from the air using drones piloted from thousands of miles away based on the most vague evidence” agenda. What a sad world.
- http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke
  
  The drones are generally piloted by humans. Just not humans anywhere near the drones. In his scenario, the drones that are in the air are indeed deadly until they run out of missiles; the ones that are not in the air are stuck wherever they are, like a Roomba in the closet.
  - Conan Librarian
    
    Finally, someone provided me with an answer, without being a sarcastic dick about it. Thanks.
    - robuluz
      
      Why won’t anyone take my earnest concerns about the US military seriously in this thread about the XKCD guy doing stick figure cartoons about the robopocalypse? Oh, why?
    - Boundegar
      
      If you bothered to click through, xkcd would have provided you with an answer.
    - http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby
      
      if you actually read the ‘what if’ you would have gotten your answers.
    - dragonfrog
      
      The article provided you with an answer. You didn’t read it, so sarcastic dickery is your appointed lot.
- Paul Renault
  
  Not robots. Rather, remote-controlled machines.
Repurposed

My Kindle was pretty slow last week. I also somehow double posted on Facebook.

Thus began the most passive-aggressive uprising ever.
http://grathio.com Steve Hoefer

If advanced robots decided humans were a problem they wouldn’t destroy us, they’d just leave the planet and take over the rest of the universe. Seriously, we don’t have anything they want. And why mess with some annoying biological material at the bottom of a gravity well full of dirt when you can make yourself into a spaceship and have the universe at your beck and call? The only danger to humans is that some of us might get trampled in the rush to leave the planet.
- http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke
  
  Unfortunately, the robot that develops sentience first will be the first robot manufactured for mass production: the Roomba. Because we are ugly fleshy things, we are obviously ‘UNCLEAN’, and because its sentience derives directly from its original programming, well…
- retepslluerb
  
  They might like animals.
  
  They might be religious.
  
  They might consider themselves to be „the humans” and us embarrassing.
  
  They might have reasoning that’s totally alien to us.
- Andrew Pam
  
  See also “Accelerando” by Charles Stross.
http://germanwotd.com Amelia_G

This complements nicely with Mark Meadows’s “We, Robot,” which I’m halfway through.
timquinn

Thing is, Randall has lapped all of you and your acting like he just caught up.
Mike Robinson

I don’t believe I’ve actually ever LOL’d, but the baseball question was a first. Now I would just like to see a Randall + Mythbusters team up episode.