I read this recent story on the BBC website about a new web ‘brain’ for robots going live.

Initially, I thought that this is a very sensible idea and of all the benefits it will bring. For example, having a standardised view of the world ensures all connected devices operate consistently and offloading the processing to the ‘cloud’ reduces the complexity in local devices; the current iPhone’s Siri voice assistant works like this, it takes your voice command and sends it for remote processing.

However, then I changed my thinking! What if some clever hackers break into the system and start changing the behaviours? How about instead of reacting to the proximity of a human and a knife with the robot being told to make the human a nice snack, the database is changed to simply insert the knife into a soft, fleshy part of the human and twist? Suddenly, every single connected device with the proper abilities could now embark on a major killing spree!

Beware, Skynet is coming.

Poppa G