Scary Robots Fortnight

Halloween is approaching and time to ponder what’s scarier than bad Star Wars sequels. It’s a toss up between the robot spiders that appear in Minority Report and real robots like Diego-san. Halloween is a great excuse to learn about morphology, computer vision, the Uncanny Valley, software engineering, and why you should never download your brain into a robot. For the next two weeks RTSF will review overtly scary robots in science fiction and in real life. Why “overtly” because as Stuart Russell points out, there are subtle ways in which AI and robotics can create havoc. Todd McAulty, a machine learning expert by day and scifi writer by night, lists his favorite top 10 evil robots in science fiction, so we will start the week with a review of his gameLit book Robots of Gotham and how it illustrates computer vision in drones. Along the way look for reviews with teachable moments, as well as flash reviews of guilty pleasure robot horror books and movies, and a slideshow or two.