On Autopilot

Metzger, Robert A. "On Autopilot." Aboriginal S. F. #24 (Nov.-Dec. 1990): 42 f.

On the work of Rodney Brooks of the MIT Insect Lab on small, simple, cockroach-like robots for research on Mars. The little robots would use low-level AI, not like conscious human thinking but like the great majority of our actions, like walking and most driving of cars: figuratively "on autopilot." Cf. and contrast this useful insect/robot conjunction with what Richard D. Erlich and Thomas P. Dunn have called "The Ovion/Cylon Alliance": i.e., threatening, insectoid machines or literal alliances as in the Ovions (insectoid beings) and Cylons [robots] in opening episode of the original Battlestar Galactica television show (17 Sept. 1978).