A Sky Filled With Drones: A Science Fiction Story

Long before the General Robots Corporation introduced models that would cause the unemployment of more than 40 million US workers, it introduced version 1.0 of its General Purpose Robot. Few people noticed. It was rather like the release of version 1.0 of Microsoft Windows, which attracted almost no attention.

By the time the General Robots Corporation released version 2.0 of its General Purpose Robot, it began to attract a small amount of press notice. And just as version 3.0 was the release number that caused Microsoft Windows to become a household word, it was version 3.0 of the General Purpose Robot that made the product a household word across the country. Some 15 million workers found themselves out of work, replaced by the General Purpose Robot.

Not long after the General Robots Corporation released version 4.0 of its General Purpose Robot, which had some very powerful self-learning capabilities, experts estimated that more than 30 million US workers had been displaced by the robot. After the release of version 5.0 of the General Purpose Robot, which was dubbed the “Einstein in a box,” the unemployment rate in the United States climbed to more than 25%. Companies kept buying more and more of the General Purpose Robots, and kept firing more and more workers.

In the city of Washington D.C a group of social activists got together to plan a strategy to counter the huge spike in unemployment.

“We have to do something, or half the country will be unemployed before long,” said George Taylor.

“Well, the one resource we have is bodies,” said Frank Jones. “Millions of them. Let's start using them. We'll start organizing mass protests. Maybe someone in Congress will notice if we plant two million feet on the Washington Mall.”

Using all the techniques of social media, a huge event was organized to protest the huge increase in unemployment caused by the use of robots. The plan was to bus in people from thirty different states.

But having made countless billions selling its robots, the General Robots Corporation had anticipated that there would be mass protests, and had begun buying up congressmen like a person would buy cherries at a supermarket. Using its army of congressional lobbyists, the huge corporation obtained the passage of the Robotic Progress Act, which included the following outrageous provision:

The General Robots Corporation shall have the right to defend its corporate business interests against any threat, and shall not be guilty of any criminal wrongdoing for violating any national, state, or local law while pursuing a defense of its corporate business interests. When defending its business interests, the General Robots Corporation shall be held harmless against any lawsuits that may be filed by parties affected by its actions.

On the day of the mass protest on the Washington Mall, the crowd grew larger and larger, eventually reaching a size of more than one million. The crowd listened to speakers denounce the loss of human jobs caused by robots taking so many jobs. Several of the speakers angrily denounced the General Robots Corporation.

Then suddenly a horde of flying robot drones began to appear in the western sky. The crowd looked at the robot drones, and assumed the worst.

“They're drones, just like they used in Afghanistan!” said one protester. “They're here to mow us all down with machine gun fire!”

The crowd began to run away towards the East. But then from exactly that direction there appeared another huge horde of flying robot drones in the sky. The crowd also tried running to the North, but another huge cloud of robot drones appeared in the northern sky. There was one direction left to flee, to the South. But that direction was also blocked by a huge group of flying robot drones in the sky.

Most of the massive crowd stayed where it was. Many said prayers, fearing the worst, thinking a gigantic massacre was about to begin. Thousands thought that the green grass of the Washington Mall was about to run red with the blood of the protesters.

Then all at once the drones started approaching the crowd from all directions, flying back and forth over the crowd. The drones swooped very low, to a height of only about 20 feet.

But the flying robot drones did not fire on the crowd. They just kept flying back and forth over the crowd.

Once it was clear that the flying robot drones were not going to fire on the crowd, the terrified crowd dispersed.

“I guess their whole purpose was just to scare the hell out of us,” said George Taylor. “It pretty much worked. I almost had a heart attack.”

But the flying drone robots had been sent to do more than just scare the protesters. The flying robots had flown over the protesters again and again for the purpose of photographing them. The photographs taken by the flying robot drones were processed by powerful facial recognition software which used a database of faces obtained from online social network pictures. The General Robots Corporation was thereby able to make a list of the names of a large fraction of the protesters. It then used this list to do various types of computerized harm to the protesters. The General Robots Corporation had not used bullets against the protesters, but it did use against them a barrage of bits and bytes that was almost as destructive as bullets.

“I've got reports from very many of our protesters that they've had all kinds of trouble,” said George Taylor, speaking a few weeks after the big protest in Washington D.C. “Some are reporting that people opened credit cards in their names, and charged lots of money. Other people are reporting that their credit records have been messed with, and contain all kinds of outrageous errors, such as false records of missed payments and bankruptcies. Others are reporting that the police computers list them with arrest records or conviction records, even though they've never been arrested. Many people have had their computers wiped out by viruses. We have thousands of cases of identity theft, and innumerable cases of online mischief. For example, my online history now says that I am a convicted arsonist, which is completely false.”

“It's the work of the General Robots Corporation,” said Frank Jones. “They've waged electronic war against us, creating all kinds of hell for the people who attended our protest. But how could they have found out who attended the protest?”

“All those times the flying drones passed over the protesters – the drones were probably taking pictures,” deduced George Taylor correctly. “Then they probably dumped the pictures into a face recognition database to get the names of the attendees.”

“Do you know what happened to me?” said Frank. “They erased my college transcript. The Social Security Administration now says they have no record of my social security number. My bank says I don't even have an account. It's like I've been excommunicated from the human race. And I've heard from many other protesters with the same problem.”

“Next week in Chicago we have another big protest against all the job losses caused by the robots,” said George. “We've got to make sure this doesn't happen again. What can we do?”

“I've got it!” said Frank. “We can call one of the big theatrical supply companies. We'll order a huge number of fake beards, a ton of cheap sunglasses, and a thousand containers of nose putty. Everyone can disguise themselves so they won't be recognized from the photographs taken by the flying drones.”

“Do you have any idea how much that would cost?” complained George. “And do you realize how ridiculous everyone at the big protest would look, wearing fake beards and fake noses? No, Frank, there is actually an existing technology we can use that is very effective at preventing flying drone robots from taking a photograph of your face. And the great thing is, everybody already has this technology.”

“What is it?” asked Frank.

“It's called an umbrella,” said George.

Will Wealth Inequality Increase in the Future?

One of the most serious problems in the United States is the very high degree of wealth inequality – the fact that a large fraction of the national wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few. In the United States the top 10% of the population owns 80% of all financial assets. The top 1% own about 34% of all financial assets. The graph below shows the stunning degree to which wealth in the United States is concentrated in the hands of the few.

Despite all the attention to the Occupy Wall Street movement, we have seen very little done to try to correct this problem, and under the current administration wealth inequality seems to be increasing rather than decreasing.

But what about the next several decades: should we expect that wealth inequality will grow even worse? There is reason to fear this. Certain technological developments on the horizon may tend to increase the degree to which wealth is concentrated in the hands of the few.

One technological development which may increase wealth inequality is the ability to enhance the genes of your offspring. Before long we may have medical advances that allow a prospective father and mother to go to a doctor and request gene modifications that will increase the likelihood of their child being born with a high IQ. At first, this will probably be something rather modest – perhaps a technique that will have a good chance of adding of 10 or 20 IQ points to the intelligence of a child.

When such exotic techniques are developed, it is unlikely that they will be covered by the average person's health insurance. These techniques will probably be expensive treatments that only the rich can afford. The result will be that the rich may tend to have smarter children, who will have a great advantage in the job market for high paying jobs requiring a sharp intelligence. This will help to perpetuate the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few, just as the legacy admissions policies of Ivy League colleges have the same effect (policies that make it easier for you to get into an Ivy League college if your parents went to them).

Another thing that may tend to make wealth inequality worse is the use of chemical or electronic cognitive enhancements, which only the rich may be able to afford. Currently some people are using the prescription drug Adderall to boost mental performance. In the future we may have various high-priced drugs to boost mental performance, as well as electronic devices for cognitive enhancement, possibly including devices for connecting the brain with computers. The people who can afford such cognitive enhancements will tend to get into better schools, get better jobs, and make more money. But it may be that only those from rich families will be able to afford such cognitive enhancements. So it will be a case of rich families getting richer. If you are from a poor family, you won't be able to afford the cognitive enhancements your child may need to get into a top school and become a top earner in tomorrow's world.

Another thing that may tend to make wealth inequality worse is any technology that causes an increase in human lifespans, as long as it also causes an increase in the average retirement age. Imagine if the average retirement age were only 55. A person might work until he was 55 when he had started to become rich, and would then retire, earning no more. But imagine if the average human lifespan increases to 100, and the average retirement age increases to 80. That would greatly increase wealth inequality, because you would have many more cases of rich people piling up additional riches. A person might start working at 22, get rich by 55, then keep working for 25 additional years, during which time he just piles up additional riches. Such a person would also be holding his high-paying job for 58 years, giving much less of an opportunity for a poor person to get ahead by taking his job. The higher the average retirement age, the more commonly we tend to see cases of the rich getting richer. Future increases in lifespan that lead to an increase in the retirement age will therefore tend to increase wealth inequality, the concentration of wealth in the hands of the few.

What are some of the things the government can do to decrease wealth inequality? The main things are increasing inheritance taxes, making the tax code more progressive, and reducing obscure tax loopholes that are used only by those who can afford expensive tax lawyers. Unfortunately, in the United States we have a Congress that seems to operate on the principle of “government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.” So there is little chance that we will see any legislation any time soon that will help to limit the every growing concentration of wealth in the hands of the few. Because of the reasons mentioned above, we have reason to fear that the problem of excessive concentration of wealth in a small number of hands will get worse rather than better.

Hyperdimensional Heist: A Science Fiction Story

The Large Hadron Collider uses so much energy that before it started running in 2008 many people were worried that this gigantic circular scientific device would produce a black hole that would destroy our entire planet. I'm not going to tell you that I used the Large Hadron Collider to destroy our entire planet. I'm merely going to tell you something a lot simpler and easier to believe, which is that I hacked the Large Hadron Collider and turned it into a machine for teleporting objects into the Fourth Dimension.

I could tell you the technical details of how I did it. I could tell you about how I discovered a variant of supersymmetry theory which postulated a Fourth Dimension we could actually reach from our planet, by applying sufficient energy. I could tell you about how I hacked into the software used by the Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle accelerator, so that I could secretly use some of its enormous energy to teleport objects into the Fourth Dimension. I could go into the details of the mathematics, which would quickly make your head hurt. I could tell you about the small electronic gizmos I added in a few places of the Large Hadron Collider, additions which no one noticed because there were already miles of electronic machinery inside its vast circular shape. But I'll spare you that discussion. Just take my word for it: by the time I had finished all my secret shenanigans, I had created a device allowing me to send any object from our familiar world to the mysterious Fourth Dimension. I was the only person in the world who knew about this functionality.

I remember the first time I did a teleportation. I used my computer at the Large Hadron Collider, the computer in my little private office. I logged in to the computer program I had written, and clicked on some buttons allowing me to secretly steal some of the energy of the Large Hadron Collider. I then specified some spatial coordinates for the object I wanted to teleport to the Fourth Dimension. The spatial coordinates were for a tree I could see out of my office window. I pressed the Teleport button on my software screen, and then I looked out the window. The tree was gone.

But at this point I didn't really know that the object had gone to the Fourth Dimension, because I hadn't yet actually gone to the Fourth Dimension, and seen the tree over there. So I figured what I needed to do was teleport myself to the Fourth Dimension, to verify its existence with my own eyes. This raised a tricky issue: once I teleported myself to the Fourth Dimension, how could I get back to our world? My solution was to add to my computer interface some functionality that would allow me to specify a return time for any object I teleported to the Fourth Dimension. So if I wanted to transport an object permanently into the Fourth Dimension, I would just not specify a return time, and the object would stay over there forever. But if I wanted to transport myself for an hour to the Fourth Dimension, I would specify a return time one hour into the future, insuring that I would stay over there for only one hour.

Using my improved interface, I specified my own spatial coordinates, and I specified a return time one hour into the future. I pressed the Teleport button on my screen. Then it happened. I was no longer in our world. I was in the Fourth Dimension. The teleportation had worked.

I looked all around and saw nothing but a flat featureless plane. On the flat plane I could see no objects except for one thing: the tree I had teleported from outside my office window. I was delighted. The teleportation had worked just as I had hoped.

I had specified on my computer screen that my teleportation should only last for one hour. I had teleported at 6:00 PM, and I expected to be teleported back at 7:00 PM. I looked at my watch very nervously as the time approached 7:00 PM. Would it work as I expected, or would I be stuck alone in the Fourth Dimension?

To my delight exactly at 7:00 PM I was teleported back to my office. Everything had worked exactly as I had hoped.

Having proven that the Fourth Dimension was real, and that I could reach it, I wondered what to do next. Should I tell my bosses at the Large Hadron Collider that I had developed the most astonishing breakthrough in scientific history? I considered that, but I figured that it would not be very profitable to me. Sure, I would be able to write a book, and do a profitable speaking tour, but I longed for greater riches.

It was then that I realized that I could use my invention to become wealthy beyond my wildest dreams.

It was so simple. All that I had to do was to use my invention to teleport some of the world's greatest riches into the Fourth Dimension. Then I would have those riches to use however I wished. No one would be able to discover that I had stolen the riches, because I was the only one who knew how to get to the Fourth Dimension.

I decided to start with the Mona Lisa, one of the world's most famous paintings. On the internet I got the exact spatial coordinates of the Louvre Museum in Paris, and all of its rooms. I was then able to determine the exact spatial coordinates for the spot where the Mona Lisa hung in the Louvre Museum. I typed in the coordinates on my computer screen, and pressed the Teleport button. At first I had no idea whether it had worked. But that night I heard on the television news that Leonardo da Vinci's famous painting the Mona Lisa had vanished from the Louvre Museum. I assumed I had successfully teleported the painting into the Fourth Dimension.

I then figured that I would like to own a nice diamond. I tried to remember the names of any diamonds, and I could remember only one: the Hope Diamond, a beautiful grayish-blue diamond of 45 carats. After some research on the internet, I was able to find out the exact spatial coordinates of the spot where the Hope Diamond was stored. I typed in the coordinates on my computer screen, and pressed the Teleport button. The next day it was announced that the Hope Diamond had mysteriously disappeared.

Using the same technique, I teleported into the Fourth Dimension five tons of gold bricks from a Federal Reserve Bank, and twenty million dollars in unmarked bills from a bank in New York.

I then longed to touch with my own hands the riches I had stolen. So using the same computer screen I had used before, I specified the spatial coordinates of my own location. As soon as I pressed the Teleport button, I was instantly transported back to the Fourth Dimension.

I looked around, and saw everything that I expected to see. There was the same featureless plane I had seen before. On the plane were all the things I had teleported to the Fourth Dimension: the tree, the Mona Lisa, the Hope Diamond, the five tons of gold bricks, and the twenty million dollars in unmarked cash. 

I went up to the Hope Diamond, and picked it up in my hand. I held the Mona Lisa in my hands, and gently touched the edge of the canvas.

Putting the painting down, I looked at my watch, and asked myself: now what was it that I had specified as the return hour when I would be teleported back to my office? It was 6:15 PM, and I thought I must have typed in a return time of 7:00 PM just as I had done on my first trip to the Fourth Dimension.

But then 7:00 PM came and went. I will still there in the Fourth Dimension. I then realized to my horror: when I had used my computer screen in my office I had failed to type in a return time.

My computer program had no provision at all for a default return time. I could have programmed in such a feature easily enough, but I had neglected to do it. My failure to type in a return time meant one thing: I would never return from the Fourth Dimension.

I looked around the featureless plane on which I stood. There was no food or water anywhere. I could keep walking along the featureless plane, but would be unlikely to find anything that would save my life. I was doomed.

I wrote these words down as a record for anyone who discovers my lifeless body here in the Fourth Dimension. If you are reading these words, I guess you have also reached the Fourth Dimension. I hope you have some way to get out of it.

How could I have been so stupid as to have failed to type in my return time on my computer screen? I have one explanation.

It's simple. It is an old curse. I dimly recall it now. There is a curse involving the Hope Diamond. The Hope Diamond was first stolen from the eye of a sacred Hindu idol in India. From that moment, the Hope Diamond has brought doom to every person who tried to take it as his own. I am the latest victim of this old curse.

Are There Beings Who Look Like Us Elsewhere in the Universe?

No doubt if astronauts from Earth were to journey to some other planet with civilized life, they would probably find beings who looked very different from a human. But what is the chance that somewhere out there exists extraterrestrials who very closely resemble humans?

Some astronomers who have considered this question have guessed that the chance of extraterrestrials looking like humans is basically zero. Such thinkers have pointed out that human evolution was the result of a long series of events stretching over millions of years, and many of these events were due to blind chance. As the whole series of events leading to the current human form is unlikely to be repeated again on another planet, these thinkers reason, we should not assume there are any extraterrestrials who look like us.

I'm not sure that this reasoning is very compelling, as it ignores the fact that there are multiple ways to randomly wander about and finally reach the same destination. If I leave Grand Central Station, and randomly walk around New York City, finally arriving at the Chrysler Building, it would not be right to reason that some other person leaving Grand Central Station and wandering around would not reach the Chrysler Building, on the grounds that he would have been most unlikely to have followed my random path. The person might have followed any number of other paths, and also arrived at the Chrysler Building. Similarly, we can imagine a thousand different paths of evolution which might lead eventually to the existence of some organism resembling a human.

A better argument against the likelihood of extraterrestrials looking like us is based on the sheer fact that there are so many different ways in which the body of an extraterrestrial might look. Extraterrestrials might have two legs, three legs, four legs, or five legs. They might be blobs that move around like a jellyfish, or aquatic creatures that swim. Or perhaps they could have wings. If they have two legs, they might have two gigantic legs like a Tyrannosaurus Rex, and only very small arms. Some argue that there are so many possible combinations that we should assume there would only be an extremely small chance (or perhaps no chance) that extraterrestrials would look like us.

Such arguments have a certain degree of force, although I think those who argue along these lines exaggerate their case. It is true that there are many different types of organisms that could be produced by evolution, but if an extraterrestrial planet were to have civilized life, it would have to have some life form that met certain characteristics. A civilized organism would have to have powerful appendages capable of manipulating tools. That would mean a civilized extraterrestrial presumably could not look like a horse or a limbless blob or a limbless sphere or a shark (although an appearance like a centaur could not be precluded). There are surely many combinations that one could imagine for the body of a civilized extraterrestrial, but the number of combinations is probably less than a million. I would also argue that we should expect the simplest types of body arrangements to be more commonly found across the universe. If we had ten legs, ten arms, and five heads, it might be right to say that a weird body arrangement such as ours must be very rare. But as we have only two legs, two arms, and one head, we should not assume that our type of body arrangement is all that rare across the universe.

Another factor to consider is the huge number of planets on which intelligent life could evolve. Our galaxy the Milky Way contains perhaps 400 billion stars, and scientists recently estimated that there may be as many as 60 billion planets in our galaxy which may have life. Our galaxy is only one of billions of spiral galaxies in the universe. So even if it is very unlikely that civilized beings on another randomly selected world would look like us, we should still expect that there are many planets that have civilized beings that look not very different from us. Given a sufficient number of chances, even extremely unlikely things happen not just once, but repeatedly.

But if man goes exploring the distant stars, should we expect to someday find by chance civilized creatures that look rather like us? No, we should not, not unless we were to visit thousands of stars. The chance of another planet developing civilized life that looks like humans is sufficiently low that we should not expect to find humanoid creatures on the first few hundreds of planets that we explore.

Somewhere out there probably exists creatures looking much like us, but it may be eons before we ever get in touch with such beings (unless we get help from some galactic social network that helps civilized beings find out about the existence of other civilized beings with a similar appearance). We should expect that the first few dozens or hundreds of alien species that we communicate with in future ages will look very, very different from us. 

SBH (Single Blue Humanoid) seeks social interaction across the light years