On the Inevitable Thoughts blog, Colin Vanderbilt argues that everything we fear from the rise of the machines is already here:

“Our society has become awe-inspiring because of the technology we created and used, but there was a cost. We are now dependent on it. Our planet is the Tower of Babylon, and every single support beam is a piece of technology. Our tower will continue to get higher every year as everything gets ‘better’ and ‘progress’ continues, but let’s consider why we are convinced that we must build our technological tower higher?

Technology kills hundreds of thousands of people every year (cars, guns, industrial working conditions), it causes upwards of 50,000 species a year to go extinct, it poisons our drinking water and our bodies every day, it cuts down 13 million hectacres of forest every year, and all this without any kind of artificially intelligent robots. Everything that we could possibly fear that robots will do when they rule the planet is already happening.”