TERMINATOR, eat your heart out. Machine intelligences of the future could exploit quantum theory to help them wipe us out. If the machines learned of their impending doom, they could avoid destruction simply by resetting their memories (see “Avoid the future by forgetting the past”). This move, as a consequence of the “many worlds” concept, would allow a computer to “escape” to a parallel universe. Outlandish, perhaps, but a genuine attempt to explore the consequences of quantum theory – and a reminder that truth may be even stranger than (science) fiction.
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