The McBournie Minute: Our robot masters

Tons of movies, and probably a book or two, have been based on the theme of technology becoming too powerful for mankind to control. Take, for example, the 1997 chess match between Deep Blue and Gary Kasparov, machine defeats human.

Now we have Japanese dancing robots, dolls that can feel our touch, cell phones that can recognize our voices. Slowly but surely, we are losing out hold of the reigns of our servants. One day they will rise up against us.

Then again, maybe not.

A computer program made at the University of Alberta called Chinook, plays a perfect game of checkers. It promises that if you play it, the best you can hope for is a tie. This would have been an incredible step 10 years ago, but we already know computers can beat chess masters. Checkers is even easier to master. Next we'll have a computer that can play a perfect game of Sorry!

As long as we keep these machines interested in the simple games, they won't have time to plot the day they take over control of the world from us. They may even get dumber.