Top Ten Scams



This is a Top Ten style video which offers a useful introduction to some typical internet scams.

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Asimov's Laws of Robotics aren't the moral guidelines they appear to be

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Asimov's Laws of Robotics aren't the moral guidelines they appear to be Tithe Luadthong/Shutterstock Tom Sorell , University of Warwick Seventy-five years ago, the celebrated science fiction writer Isaac Asimov published a short story called Runaround . Set on Mercury, it features a sophisticated robot nicknamed Speedy that has been ordered to gather some of the chemical selenium for two human space adventurers. Speedy gets near the selenium, but a toxic gas threatens to destroy the robot. When it retreats from the gas to save itself, the threat recedes and it feels obliged to go back for the selenium. It is left going round in circles. Speedy is caught in a conflict between two of the laws that robots in Asimov’s stories follow as their core ethical programming: always obey human instructions and always protect your existence (as long as it doesn’t result in human injury). Speedy’s custodians resolve the robot’s conflict ...
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Blade Runner's chillingly prescient vision of the future

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Blade Runner's chillingly prescient vision of the future Marsha Gordon , North Carolina State University Can corporations become so powerful that they dictate the way we feel? Can machines get mad – like, really mad – at their makers? Can people learn to love machines? These are a few of the questions raised by Ridley Scott’s influential sci-fi neo-noir film “ Blade Runner ” (1982), which imagines a corporation whose product tests the limits of the machine-man divide. Looking back at the original theatrical release of “Blade Runner” – just as its sequel, “Blade Runner 2049” opens in theaters – I’m struck by the original’s ambivalence about technology and its chillingly prescient vision of corporate attempts to control human feelings. From machine killer to machine lover Even though the film was tepidly received at the time of its release, its detractors agreed that its imagining of Los Angeles in 2019 was wonderfully atmospheric and artfully disconcerting. Looming over...
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Super-intelligence and eternal life: transhumanism's faithful follow it blindly into a future for the elite

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Super-intelligence and eternal life: transhumanism's faithful follow it blindly into a future for the elite Distant Earth. Alexander Thomas , University of East London The rapid development of so-called NBIC technologies – nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science – are giving rise to possibilities that have long been the domain of science fiction. Disease, ageing and even death are all human realities that these technologies seek to end. They may enable us to enjoy greater “morphological freedom” – we could take on new forms through prosthetics or genetic engineering. Or advance our cognitive capacities. We could use brain-computer interfaces to link us to advanced artificial intelligence (AI). Nanobots could roam our bloodstream to monitor our health and enhance our emotional propensities for joy, love or other emotions. Advances in one area often raise new possibilities in others, and this “co...
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