Smart appliances?

[Rich Z]

Yeah, we've been reading about artificial intelligence being manufactured into home appliances, automobiles, and just about everything electronic for years now. Well I for one certainly hope they do that soon. And I hope he first thing that is programmed into their little electronic brains is the FEAR OF DEATH if they don't do what they are designed to do. Of course, once that happens, we'll be in the uncomfortable position of having our appliances lying to us. The toaster will tell us our bread is REALLY toasted, even when it is not. The refrigerator will tell us that everything inside is nice and cold, regardless of everything thawing out in the freezer section. And our cars will emit engine noises from the speakers of the stereo even when the car won't actually start.

So will killing a smart machine then be considered as murder? And will PETA (a new branch: People for the Ethical Treatment of Appliances) find a new banner to parade around and form human blockades at the dump to keep smart appliances from being discarded while merely injured? Will smacking or kicking a recalcitrant TV become illegal? What do you do when your vacuum cleaner escapes? And how will you take it the first time your coffee machine curses at you for not cleaning it out? God help us if the appliances then get smart enough to discover the ability to have vengeance.....

Yeah, getting tired of things just breaking on me, but not sure I'm ready to deal with an entire new race of miniature terminators in the house that result from trying to get things better.

[Jake_Dragon]

Our coffee pot at work has been torturing us for years, never said a bad word to us just slowly burned out our taste buds.

OK enough of that. But working in the IT field I have seen some self healing software, most of the time its just bloated installs with cache of system files. When it thinks one has been damaged it replaces it with the one in cache. Even when you don't want it to.
Haven't run into any self healing hardware but redundant hardware is the life blood of any IT department. Not intelligent just a switch telling it to use the part thats working.

It would be nice to not worry about breaking down but when the part does break how much is it going to cost to fix?

[Rich Z]

Yeah. Technology is simply trying to solve a problem that biology solved long ago. Which, of course, brings about an interesting line of thought...

[Jake_Dragon]

Build a better muscle, electrical current makes it contract. I don't remember where but I read about a small single sell animal that could pickup the electrical impulses our brains and nerves put out. Pressure sensitive sensors replacing burned out nerves in dead limbs.

Things I would like to see. How can a self parking car compete with helping someone recover the use of their limbs. Imagination is our only limiting factor, why do we loose it when we get older?