The Island of Robotica

I generally come up with amazing ideas. This is one of them.

Eric and I were at lunch discussing the (then) upcoming appearance of Watson on Jeopardy. We both agreed that we wanted to see Watson win. Who wouldn’t cheer for the machine? Then we started discussing the computer that beat Garry Kasparov at chess. Eric made a great point, machines are better than people.

I decided to take that great point and run with it. What if I created a robot that was an awesome runner and it could beat all runners? And I created a robot that was an amazing swimmer, even better than Michael Phelps? And I created a robot that could jump twice as a high as any person can jump?

If I had all these amazingly talented robots, I’d want them to be able to compete in events and win. Let’s be honest, there’s no reason to be that great at something if you can’t win to assert your dominance. The ultimate sports competition is the Olympics. So, naturally that’s where my robots would compete.

But in order to compete in the Olympics, you need to be from a country. My robots would be shunned out of every other country since they’re not “people” and allowing them to compete would be “unfair.” I would need to create my own country, with my own rules. So, I would need to purchase a small island where I would store all my robots. I would name that island Robotica.

Unless the world wanted to embark into WWIII: The Robot Wars, I would be allowed to bring my robot athletes to the Olympics.

Every two years I would take my robots to the chosen country and collect my gold. Initially I planned on all Robotica’s profits coming only from gold, but as I’m writing this I realize that I have the perfect country for producing anything. If I had robots that were better than people at everything imaginable, then I’d have robots that were the best at sewing, soldering, organizing flowers, cooking, jumping on trampolines (I’m not sure how I’d make money on that one yet, but can you imagine a robot jumping on a trampoline? That would be entertaining!), the list goes on and on.

I just need to figure out how to make a robot now.