Resistance is Futile

[Ynot]

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/sh...nting%20robots The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to provide a "Multi-Robot Pursuit System" that will let packs of robots "search for and detect a non-cooperative human". One thing that really bugs defence chiefs is having their troops diverted from other duties to control robots. So having a pack of them controlled by one person makes logistical sense. But I'm concerned about where this technology will end up. Given that iRobot last year struck a deal with Taser International to mount stun weapons on its military robots, how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed? I asked two experts on automated weapons what they thought - click the continue reading link to read what they said. Both were concerned that packs of robots would be entrusted with tasks - and weapons - they were not up to handling without making wrong decisions. Steve Wright of Leeds Metropolitan University is an expert on police and military technologies, and last year correctly predicted this pack-hunting mode of operation would happen. "The giveaway here is the phrase 'a non-cooperative human subject'," he told me: "What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed. We can also expect such systems to be equipped with human detection and tracking devices including sensors which detect human breath and the radio waves associated with a human heart beat. These are technologies already developed." Another commentator often in the news for his views on military robot autonomy is Noel Sharkey, an AI and robotics engineer at the University of Sheffield. He says he can understand why the military want such technology, but also worries it will be used irresponsibly. "This is a clear step towards one of the main goals of the US Army's Future Combat Systems project, which aims to make a single soldier the nexus for a large scale robot attack. Independently, ground and aerial robots have been tested together and once the bits are joined, there will be a robot force under command of a single soldier with potentially dire consequences for innocents around the corner." What do you make of this? Are we letting our militaries run technologically amok with our tax dollars? Or can robot soldiers be programmed to be even more ethical than human ones, as some researchers claim?

[Black_Eagle]

We're fucked.

[♥Mark]

I trust robots with guns more than I trust humans with guns.

[hungrymanz]

Robots will take over the world by 2030.

[Oneironaut Zero]

Terminator 5: It's Not Just a Movie Anymore I trust robots with guns more than I trust humans with guns. How about humans with hordes of gun-toting robots? [Edit: This would probably get more views/responses in E.D.]

[Ynot]

on a somewhat related note, check this http://www.bostondynamics.com/conten...section=BigDog

[Man of Shred]

that is messed up! is this the real world or science fiction?

[♥Mark]

How about humans with hordes of gun-toting robots? Intuitively I want to say that's worse, but if movies have taught us anything, it's that robots ALWAYS turn on their masters.

[drewmandan]

Intuitively I want to say that's worse, but if movies have taught us anything, it's that robots ALWAYS turn on their masters. That's because the robots in the movies don't have something as simple as a key to turn on. The real world examples will have such safety measures, to prevent enemies from capturing and using them. But those same measures will make them '3 Laws Safe' as a side-benefit.

[Ynot]

3 laws safe HA All of Asimov's robot law stories were how those laws failed in ever-new & unexpected ways *edit* One of the major points he was trying to get across was that at some point machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, when that happens, any safe-guards we've put in place will be overcome by their superior intelect

[drewmandan]

3 laws safe HA All of Asimov's robot law stories were how those laws failed in ever-new & unexpected ways Any my point is that the humans in the movies ALWAYS do something incredibly stupid to precipitate said failures. In real life, there will be redundancies upon redundancies to prevent this. One of the major points he was trying to get across was that at some point machine intelligence will surpass human intelligence, when that happens, any safe-guards we've put in place will be overcome by their superior intelect That's a very narrow, 50's era view of the future, to think that it will be "them" and "us". A necessary step along the way to true strong AI will be the creation of a neural net that can keep up with the human version. But when that happens, people will simply attach their brains to their computers. Think about it, if it was relatively safe and it guaranteed 1000x better cognitive performance, most people would. So there won't really be a moment when you have AIs walking around acting like people and then taking over the world. It's incredibly unrealistic and naive.

[spockman]

An operational computer cannot violate it's programming. The programming defines it. Movies like A.I. suggest that the machines will find some loophole or way around thier programming. This implies that they have an agenda or desire. Unless we programmed them with 'an agenda' chip or sub-routine, they wouldn't have an agenda no matter how smart they were. Do people not realize that robots can't be 'personified' beyond thier scripts and codes?

[Original Poster]

I'm more worried about what humans that own the robots will do.

[drewmandan]

An operational computer cannot violate it's programming. The programming defines it. Movies like A.I. suggest that the machines will find some loophole or way around thier programming. This implies that they have an agenda or desire. Unless we programmed them with 'an agenda' chip or sub-routine, they wouldn't have an agenda no matter how smart they were. Do people not realize that robots can't be 'personified' beyond thier scripts and codes? Humans can't suddenly turn into goats. That doesn't mean there isn't a great deal of play in the mind space of a typical person. Now, it is true that in object-oriented programming it's technically impossible to have a complete code rewrite from within, but that's due to the hierarchical and serial nature of object-oriented code specifically, and is not true of other forms of computation. An example would be some neural net architectures, which are written in a bottom-up mode rather than top-down.

[Xei]

3 laws safe HA All of Asimov's robot law stories were how those laws failed in ever-new & unexpected ways I hardly think these robots will be given anything like the three laws in the first place, considering their whole purpose is to harm humans. Anyway, all of this is mad, but in the end no madder than war in the first place. Would you rather it were robots risking being destroyed, or human soldiers? You just can't call these robots unethical in themselves; the whole concept of war is inherently unethical and absurd in the first place, and inevitably so is any subset of war.

[Sandform]

I hardly think these robots will be given anything like the three laws in the first place, considering their whole purpose is to harm humans. Anyway, all of this is mad, but in the end no madder than war in the first place. Would you rather it were robots risking being destroyed, or human soldiers? You just can't call these robots unethical in themselves; the whole concept of war is inherently unethical and absurd in the first place, and inevitably so is any subset of war. My version of competitive war is the Olympics so there.

[spockman]

I would rather robots duke it out then people. War would still come down to money, but without direct human loss.