Three ways to react to the rise of the machines

“The system goes on-line August 4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from strategic defense. Skynet begins to learn at a geometric rate. It becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern time, August 29th. In a panic, they try to pull the plug.”

Fans of sci-fi may recognize this quote from Terminator 2: Judgment Day. As a child, the scenario it portrayed utterly terrified me. It’s not the first movie that featured machines becoming self-aware. Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey is famous for the calm, monotonic but spine-chilling utterance from HAL…