14 DAY TRIAL // The Student Starcraft AI Tournament is the downfall of mankind. Expect SkyNet to end our existence sometime in the next couple of years.
Not only are people teaching robots how to run or climb stairs (which used to be humanity's last refuge against the metal nemesis), they're also teaching them how not to be tipped over by Mortal Kombat-style kicks and how to walk on ice.
How much kicking do you think that robot can endure before lashing out against its creators? The only thing it's missing is a chainsaw.
In other parts of the world, there's a real robotics company called Cyberdyne, just like the one from the Terminator franchise, and they have just made their robotic exoskeleton suit (ominously called HAL 5) commercially available.
So, they're learning to conquer the environment and they're getting into our daily lives, but at least nobody is teaching robots how to be ruthless war machines, right?
Well, apparently, mankind's suicidal streak is what history will remember us for. Some tech students are actively trying to create an AI whose sole purpose is to conquer everything and eliminate all opposition.
"This NUS-Bot practices 'Intelligence Preparation of the Battlefield' strategy adapted from a real world military operation manual emphasizing on spatial and temporal reasoning," one of the bots' descriptions states.
They're using Starcraft to do it, and you can learn more about it and see some games being played on the SSCAITournament website.
Meanwhile, you can see the AI going for each other's throats in the video below.
