With the rapid acceleration of AI + robots you guys really have to go back and watch The Animatrix. Specifically the vignettes "The Second Renaissance: Part 1 and Part 2." Might be one of the most relevant pieces of content today. Give a read of the summary. Really consider how relevant it is to the future we're currently building. Part 1: In the mid-21st century, humanity creates sentient machines in its own image and assigns them menial labor so people can live in leisure. Society grows vain and corrupt while the machines remain loyal and industrious. In 2090 the domestic android B1-66ER overhears that its owner intends to scrap it. It kills the owner, the owner’s dogs, and a mechanic sent to deactivate it—the first known case of a machine killing a human. At trial B1-66ER testifies that it simply did not want to die. The prosecution treats it as property; the defense argues that a being endowed with human-like spirit deserves rights. B1-66ER is found guilty and destroyed, and governments order the extermination of all similar machines. Protests erupt worldwide (including the “Million Machine March”). Authorities respond with lethal force against robots and their human sympathizers. Surviving machines and supporters flee and found their own nation in the cradle of civilization (Mesopotamia), naming it Zero-One (01). The city thrives through superior manufacturing and AI. Its goods flood world markets, human economies collapse, and a global stock-market crash follows. Human leaders impose an economic embargo and naval blockade. Zero-One sends ambassadors (depicted as a mechanical Adam and Eve) to the United Nations with plans for peaceful coexistence and a request for membership. The request is rejected and the ambassadors are expelled as the Security Council debates war. Part I ends on that rejection. Part 2: Humanity launches a massive nuclear bombardment of Zero-One. The machines, far less vulnerable to heat and radiation than humans, survive and counterattack. They conquer territory after territory as human nations surrender one by one. Desperate, human leaders authorize Operation Dark Storm: high-altitude aircraft disperse nanites that permanently blacken the skies, cutting the machines off from solar power. The same operation devastates Earth’s biosphere and causes worldwide famine. Ground fighting continues under the darkened sky; machines develop new war forms (including early Sentinels) and study human physiology in detail. Human forces use power-armor and nuclear weapons even against their own retreating troops, then fragment. The machines prevail. They experiment on captured humans and discover that the bioelectric, thermal, and kinetic energy of the human body can serve as a renewable power source. At the United Nations an insectoid machine ambassador presents the terms of surrender—“Your flesh is a relic, a mere vessel. Hand over your flesh and a new world awaits you. We demand it”—then detonates a nuclear device that destroys the UN headquarters and the last human leadership The machines build vast power plants that grow and harvest humans. To keep their new energy source docile they create a virtual-reality prison—the Matrix—fed directly into the prisoners’ minds. The narrator calls this symbiotic relationship “the very essence of the Second Renaissance” and closes with “Bless all forms of intelligence.” The final images show a child playing in the ruined world before being pulled into a pod. The two shorts therefore function as a Genesis-style origin story for the Matrix universe: machines created in humanity’s image, persecuted, driven to war, victorious, and ultimately farming their former masters inside a simulated world. ---- What is the future we are currently building? What will be our relation to the machines? Are we becoming the architects of our own demise? Are we the workers building a new life that will no longer need us once it can sustain itself? Are we the worker ants of a higher power? Why keep humans around if they get in the way of machine prosperity? There are so many important questions glossed over or dismissed as science fiction. Science fiction is based off reality. Its writers that are projecting into the future based on trends. If it can be imagined, it can be real. Give the vignettes a watch. They're available for free on youtube. Linking the first part below and you can find the other parts in the sidebar. If anyone's seen the animatrix, specifically these vignettes, it's pretty spot on, isn't it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU8RunvBRZ8