Well, I have a VW diesel (a Jetta), that was fixed with a defeat device. Shucks. Class action lawsuits are a result of this, and I have found myself as a 'named plaintiff' representing Tennessee owners in one issued by Hagens Berman, a Seattle law firm. That doesn't mean I would receive any more compensation than any of the other owners, nor that I would actually have to do much (apart from a possible half-day deposition). Moreover, the many anti-VW lawsuits may well be consolidated in the end. But what do I think VW should do for the owners? Hmm. Take our cars back and give us back the money we paid for them, maybe? Pronto.
Apparently Elon Musk is scared that our ORNL TITAN supercomputer might take over the world. That might be fun, but as a variant - that us evil scientists use the supercomputer to seize control.
Now, TITAN is already a 20 petaflop machine, whereas the human brain is only 10 petaflops, so we already have the raw power needed to create superintelligence. A tad more programming could lead our little toy to controlled synthetic ultraconsciousness, with a brain the size of a planet, capable of talking the hind legs off an Arcturan megadonkey*.
But just yapping and a monster brain are not enough - you need arms, legs, weapons etc. So we'd need to hook TITAN up to mindless robots that can see to our physical needs: huge, indestructible machines with infinite strength, precision and balance that never tire and prepare perfect sushi.
Evilly-laughing, mwaha ha ha ha, we villainous plotters would then finally flip the switch that orders the supercomputer to make the robots kill all the little people and use the fruits of our dystopian Earth to serve us, only us, their masters, in any way we desire. Hmm.....in my case that would require forming two robot soccer teams, one, that I would play in, being slightly better than the other.
*Acknowledgement: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
