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Clock ticks for mankind as ‘Cyberdyne’ goes public

Published Mar 28th, 2014 12:30AM EDT
Cyberdyne IPO The End Is Near

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Of course, Skynet cannot triumph over humanity until a corporation solves the problem of how to create sentient killer machines. We are now one step closer to the end game as a company called Cyberdyne has indeed become a publicly traded firm in Tokyo.

Ominously enough, its first product involves “Hybrid Assistive Limbs” (or HAL, ironically) that are meant to help nursing home employees lift heavy objects. This seems like a fairly plausible cover story for manufacturing murderous androids, of course.

In a stroke of demented genius, the company seems to be masking its grim ultimate goal by addressing the very real problem of how to cope with health needs of Japan’s aging population.

Foolish Japanese humans went wild buying Cyberdyne shares when it went public this week, thus hastening their eventual doom. The share price soared to twice the level of pre-market trading at 3,700 yen. Cleverly, company president Yoshiyuki Sankai told Nikkei that he intends to retain majority voting rights in order to prevent the company’s technology from ever being used for military purposes.

But why? Why would he make such a precise and oddly specific pledge? Doesn’t that seem like an odd move for the president of a tech company? We will be monitoring Cyberdyne and the eventually emerging resistance movement in coming months.

After launching mobile game company SpringToys tragically early in 2000, Tero Kuittinen spent eight years doing equity research at firms including Alliance Capital and Opstock. He is currently an analyst and VP of North American sales at mobile diagnostics and expense management Alekstra, and has contributed to TheStreet.com, Forbes and Business 2.0 Magazine in addition to BGR.