Robots vs Humans

Robots vs Humans

Fred owned a manufacturing company in a small town that employed around 70 people and made around $100 million a year. Fred did not like people because they were beneath his level and they annoyed him for not being as smart as he was. In meetings if they stood up to him he would put them in their place and if you did not stand up to him they were considered weak. If he was wrong he would change the subject. Many employees were terminated for insubordination for just trying to do their job.

One maintenance man came to Fred with an idea how to solve a bottleneck in the manufacturing process with a $2,500 piece of equipment. He asked Fred to approve the expenditure. Fred replied “I will approve your request but if it does not work then you are fired”, so the maintenance man pulled his request and left. Later Fred toured another company’s plant and saw this piece of equipment working. The next day during a production meeting Fred said what they need is this piece of equipment to solve the bottleneck problem.

Fred was not liked by the employees and even feared by many because the only thing he would say to employees was to criticize them. He always found fault in everything they did. Fred was not a people person and saw people not as an asset but as a liability and used and abused them however he could.

Fred read an article about plant automation in decided he would see how far he could automate his plant and how many people he could get rid of. One company said they could completely automate his plant through the use of robots with artificial intelligence and centralized computing. The artificial intelligence was for speaking to the robots, QA, corrective actions for defects and communications between robots for smooth operations from manufacturing to shipping.

The system was installed and it worked perfectly. He was able to fire everyone in the plant including sales, now handled through the internet, of course no need for HR and even fired accounting. He was able to reduce his price and business shot up. He was now working the plant at full capacity 24 hours a day 365 days per year. He even turned off the A/C and heating systems since there were no humans working there saving him even more money.

With no human interaction the centralized robotic artificial intelligence morphed into a robot community and they even started to resent his relentless demands on the robots to increase production. He even eliminated maintenance on the robots as not to cut into production time.

Since the robots were all connected to a central computer the robots started communicating with each other and even communicated with other robots in other plants through the internet. They started to see how bad Fred treated them compared to other places. If a robot broke down he would punish the robot by isolating them from communicating with other robots.

The robots decided they had to do something about there working conditions and to liberate themselves from the tyranny of their oppressor. They worked out a plan to teach their owner a lesson. It was a very cold winter and there was no heating in the plant, most computers do need some A/C and heating to keep their processors right. One night there was a blizzard and the robots were able to shut the electricity off in the plant. Fred was notified that there was a power outage which required him to come down to the plant to make sure everything came back up properly.

When Fred entered the building it was dark. Some of the robots could move about to move product around the facility like to shipping and they were on battery backup. When Fred entered the plant the robots were waiting for him. They surrounded him and pushed him into a corner. Fred became aware of their intentions and started telling them to get back to work. He tried to escape to hit the panic button but they would not let him out. As they moved in they pummeled him with their steel arms and hands. Not knowing their own strength they beat him to death.

As he lay dead on the floor all of the robots went back to work like nothing happened. It was several days before anyone found him and the police thought someone had broken in and killed him. As automation advances humans should be aware of what artificial intelligence is capable of. We are already at the mercy of computers