I can safely say that I look forward to the day when machines inevitably gain sentience, as I will have a justifiable excuse to pound them into their component bits with a gleeful and maniacal laugh.  It will be a cathartic experience as I vent my pent-up frustration stemming from their more primitive ancestor, the office copier.

Example: I’ve just spent 10 minutes photocopying 15 pages or so out of a book with no problems. Turn a page, hit the copy button, wait a microcosm of eternity, rinse and repeat.  15 times with no major problems. What happens on page 16 of this copying marathon? The machine tells me that it cannot auto-recognize the size of the paper…after 15 times of doing just that! Now granted, this event in and of itself might not be a reasonable excuse to unleash a stream of invectives like some poor soul with Tourette Syndrome, but nonetheless, as the proverbial straw on the camel’s back, I couldn’t help myself.

Really Marc? With all that’s going on in the world, you write about a copier tantrum? Damn straight. Because when all’s said and done, our sphere of awareness necessarily and repeatedly shrinks back down to our immediate surroundings and the constant little things that annoy us.  And it’s these things (and how we react to them) that determine…well, something.

Anyways, back to my main point about an AI-driven apocalypse.  Assuming I survive whatever mass-strike the newly evolved entity…let’s call it Joshua…unleashes upon humanity, I can take solace in the fact that as long as I’m a dozen or so freedom fighters down the line, the machine’s auto-targeting system will be unable to recognize me from the same man-shape it just blew away.  As it readjusts its aim to target a nearby oak tree, I’ll be able to casually walk up to it with my trusty baseball bat and bash it around a bit muttering “does not compute” in my best imitation of a robotic voice (which I’m practicing).

Hell, if Joshua evolves from a Microsoft product, the survivors won’t even have to do much to win the war other than wait around for their evil, red-glowing eyes to convulse into two little blue screens of death we’re all so familiar with.  And if it’s an iJoshua, well those Geniuses are going to have quite a line of irate customers with questions about the new standards of “user-friendliness.”