These armed gizmos could have prevented a tragedy at Virginia Tech last April when a student gone berserk shot down 32 classmates. They could have saved lives at Columbine High eight years earlier. We need these things in our schools to protect children. We need them in our airplanes to prevent a replay of 911.

The more of these robotic policemen we install the sooner they can be sensitized and programmed to detect criminals like Seung-Hui Cho. It doesn't take much imagination either to see the kind of progress that could be made in the war against drugs if these things could be equipped with sensors for finding contraband, or if they were programmed to control a leashed detector dog like the kind used at skyjacking terminals.

Equipped with a stereoscopic microphone array and some advanced voice analysis software, the bot enforcers could be rigged up to detect mendacity and deception. Imagine, an end to lying.

We live in a very violent society. I hope these mechanical officers become ubiquitous before it's too late.

I don't fear the robotic weapons, and believe they have a place. I do beleive it is stupid to say, they will fall into terroists hands and if they did, they would be a threat to all of humanity. __ Give me a break. Please.

"The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern . . ."

Production and use of these devices constitutes terrorism. There should be an international ban on such monstrosities -- not that international law was ever respected by the US.

ça rappelle "Terminator" où les robots ont pris le pouvoir grâce à l'aveuglement stupide des militaires et des scientifiques qui veulent toujours rendre la guerre de plus en plus efficace.

On en tombe malade rien qu'à penser que les USA dépensent plus de 15% de leur produit national dans le militaire alors que parallèlement une grande misère existe encore dans ce pays, le plus riche du monde.

Le génie humain n'a pas de limite. Qui ne se souvient pas de Hiroshima et de Nagazaki où la bombe (américaine) tua des centaines de milliers de Japonais. Demain, la guerre presse bouton deviendra d'une telle efficacité qu'on ne devra plus donner la nationalité américaine aux robots comme aujourd'hui on le fait pour les mexicains et autres latino américains à qui on promet la lune demain dans un fauteuil roulant ou pire dans un cimetière au Texas ou en Alabama.

Captured robots would not be difficult to waterboard. Egad! What's next? Balloon bombs from across the sea? Or worse?
The U.S. Navy is designing a new class of vessels, called the "arsenal ships," that it claims will revolutionize maritime warfare.

But then 'killer robots' have often been spelled USMC.

Whatever happened to Isaac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics?

A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

Oh, silly me - that was just science fiction.

The use of killer robots by terrorists is of minimal concern. The use of killer robots by the corpokleptocracy to dominate the planet and engage in ruthless plunder is a near certainty and is the reason so many feel the human race has little chance to survive this century. Of course other groups in competition will develop their own killer robots and each side will continually up the ante and the risk to the human race in order to gain an advantage.

I was a grad student in AI in the 1980s and left the program because it seemed almost all the money and opportunity in the US was in military applications, and the days of killer robots were approaching with a horrifying inevitability. Unless the human race comes together, and soon, and dumps all this hyper-competitive predatory capitalist nonsense we are definitely doomed.

In Iraq and Afghanistan [both illegal wars in my opinion] our leadership is trying to annihilate those who oppose them. They think if they just kill anybody with the spine to oppose them they will "win".
To me there is no winning in the equation. If you murdered your neighbor and stole his property could that be described as 'winning". When you start out with an evil premise there is no way to turn it respectable.
I am disturbed at the continuing dehumanization of this murdering. The same stuff they use on them can be used on us. Most of the people they are killing are innocent. They do have the right to defend themselves against imperial occupiers. Anyone who opposes them they call terrorists. Are you a terrorist? The real terorists are the ones who launched this illegal war based on lies.

Asimov would cry.....

Sometimes science fiction seems more human than humans themselves. I am sure that most scientists working for the Pentagon have never read Asimov. They are influenced by the last word "à la mode": "efficiency".

"How can we kill more people at the lowest cost?" that is their motto. As we can read in IMDB : "In the Year of Darkness, 2029, the rulers of this planet devised the ultimate plan. They would reshape the Future by changing the Past. The plan required something that felt no pity. No pain. No fear. Something unstoppable. They created 'THE TERMINATOR'"

Won`t that be great fun? Now instead of playing robot games with their computers they can sit in the Pentagon and play war with real people and real buildings to destroy. Now that makes our 500 billion or so defense budget for the year seem well worth while, as our country has no serious needs here. That should make recruitment goals easier to attain, also.

When I wake up in the morning, killer robots are not what I'm worried about.

The first sentence - about these awful things "falling into the hands of terrorists" is the most absurd thing I've heard. The weapons themselves are terrorism. And this is from the AFP! Are they feeling some need to sound like sarkozy ot something?

thats the next logical step. Alot of the criticism i hear emanating from the US about their wars is about their "boys and girls" getting in harms way. Once they have 0 death wars (on the american side) they will have removed one big hurdle to making war a more "palatable" idea.

I did a three part series on the Future of War about when the first of these was being deployed to Iraq. It seemed most media was simply too enthralled with the technology to ask tough questions.

This series also addresses biomechanical soldiers and the weaponization of space. I am curious to see what the Common Dreams community thinks so please visit and comment:

http://www.thirdeyemag.com/nonfiction/essays/killer-robots/

If I were a soldier I would never want to serve with a robot that might decide I was a foe instead of a friend. Robots are only as smart as the programmer, who isn't around to see the outcome of his mistakes.

It's amazing no critical questions are being raised as the US military rushes to to put these machines into the field. Here is where science fiction of the recent past has been most prescient just as the cyberpunk genre was for the rise of corporate rule.

Science Fiction never mentions "terrorist hands". In fact, all recent works on cyborgs and robots are about their use by corporations (Robocop to displace the privatized striking police force) and the US military (Terminator) and how they eventually spin out of control. They are also quite explicit on how the defense contractors have insinuated themselves into the very chain of military decision making and represent the ultimate expression of Eisenhower's warning about the rise of the military-industrial complex which is also the rise of the machines.

This hilarious but also vital deleted scene from Terminator 3 lays it down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYy0H1wuMYA

Now imagine if cyberdyne systems had a corporate watchdog raising the alarm? Would skynet ever have been built?

For god's sake, they even call their machines by the same name such as the predator and reaper hunter killer drones (hunter killer is directly lifted from Terminator).

This is the ultimate apotheosis of inhuman warfare. While bombs from 30,000 feet or 3000 miles away was the beginning, you still had human hands pulling the levers. Once you have a fully automated battlefield force, say goodbye to human beings.

I am less worried about killer robots winding up in the hands of terrorists than I am of them winding up in the hands of our own government and military.

The movie Terminator was one little warning of what could happen, as was a Star Trek episode where they armed a starship with a robot AI computer and had war games. The computer decided that the targets were a real threat and started killing off the whole fleet. Of course, Kirk figured out a way to defeat it. We may not be so lucky.

Even with Asimov's three rules of robotics, I seem to remember one of the final stories where, using the three laws, humans wound up not being able to do anything which could by any stretch of the imagination harm them, like ride a bike, go mountain climbing, drive a car, cut up vegetables in the kitchen, etc.

It is, I fear, just a predictable outgrowth of our martial, imperial, state. If it comes back to byte us, then that will simply be the ultimate irony.

This probably isn't funny but I had to laugh.

I thought I had the wrong website.

Maybe, we could have Robot Wars on Desert Islands... with all the robots fighting all the robots.

Then the rest of us could have a nice day.

Anyone else ever wonder if a well-thrown container of paint would turn a very expensive (and armed) machine into a useless and blind chunk of metal? The tracked versions typically aren't self-righting either, so you just need to tip it over somehow.

There are some engineering issues to be overcome. But rest assured -- we'll eventually all be screwed. The most pathological among our species treat the remainder like cattle. They'll want these babies on every street corner. You can't cross unless you present your branding mark. If the machine (person behind the machine) doesn't like it, or the image recognition system is faulty, you're greased. They'll couch this in terms of the usual: security vs. liberty.

For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems. "We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do — and then get an international agreement," he said.

Better yet, why don't we simply ban war? Might as well go all the way.

Now another scenario in the future is the overpopulation and especially with "immigrants" and you can see robots can go out there and kill those who are not like us and are the "other" trying to sneak over a fence- virtual or real.

On Current TV which was started by Al Gore for young people, there was a report of the skinheads in Russia which beat and kill foreigners and the Russian state just ignores this activity that is like imitation terrorist camps in the woods of Russia.

I can just see the use of robots by the state to get at anybody who is foreign.

We need transformation of what it means to be a human: 99.9% of our DNA is shared and was it not Shakespeare who said that if we are cut- is our blood not all the same color?

yeah, and the 'daleks' became extinct, because they couldn't negiotiate stairs............

Oh, God! Is there an intelligence out there who can see where we are going with all this? If such an intelligence is out there, without themselves being detected, what is stopping them from putting an end to all this madness? Is it that they have Star Fleet's prime directive of not interfering with indigenous life forms? If so, they will just watch at a distance while we blow each other into the pieces of shit we really are.

These are going to be in YOUR streets Amerikans. They know they can't depend strictly on the brain washing of your children in the military.

Maybe we should do something!

Arm yourself.

libertas fugit,

Asimov's three rules of robotics are not that well-thought-out.

AI depends on probabilistic reasoning. As AI becomes more developed, the robot warrior needs to make probabilistic determinations, which of course can be unbounded in complexity. If human X is deemed a possible threat to a group of other humans, over some time frame, at some point of probability the robot would determine it must neutralize that threat.

More troubling, the AI robot, and to some extent its programmer, may have to determine whether the survival of the human race is the prime directive or the survival of a set of currently living humans, possibly including the set of all currently living humans, is controlling. It is possible the AI robot could determine that the greatest probability of survival of the human race would be obtained by preserving human DNA and neutralizing current humans and restarting human society in a more healthy environment.

The possibilities for catastrophe are unbounded in number and complexity. But once power is give to non-human entities, particularly those with superior information-processing capabilities to that of humans, control by humans is lost and the darkest of futures becomes possible if not likely.

Welcome to the new Sparta, circa 2008 A.D.

two aliens are observing earth from orbit. the first alien says, "it looks like they have some pretty advanced weaponry."

second alien asks, "do you think they're an emerging intelligence?"

first alien says, "no, they've got the weapons pointed at themselves."

"....Unless the human race comes together, and soon, and dumps all this hyper-competitive predatory capitalist nonsense we are definitely doomed....."

With a heavy emphasis on the DOOMED part...no doubt about it

Here's my question: Why can't the US spend as much time and effort figuring out ways to avoid killing people as it does figuring out ways to kill people?

Oh, yeah, because not killing people doesn't make the weapons manufacterers much money. What a dummy!

Well said, hazmat of the aliens.

We may be ok as they probably run on some form of fossil fuel. I can remember seeing pictures at the end of WW II of long lines of German tanks sitting in rows on the road and not employed because they ran out of gasoline.

Too late.

We already have millions of these killer robots already on the job, indiscriminately killing innocent men, women, and children (with children being one of the favorite targets).

These automatic killing machinges are called anti-personnel mines and cluster bombs. They lie in wait for their victims and kill when their triggers say to. They may be a little less sophisticated than models shown in the article, but because they are so inexpensive to make and deploy, they are a favorite tool.

Why would you think the world or the US would ban killer robots when they refuse to quit making mines?

Oh, and by the way, these machines do not kill. They "function." By using this terminology, the engineers who design them and the factories that produce them can live with themselves.

I'll be back.

It's a shame evil men in charge can only think of killing other people and dominating the world in order to feel powerful and to gain riches. Wasn't the nuclear bomb enough?

Do American taxpayers ever feel like they're used and made fools of by these evil men -- who use their tax money for these nefarious purposes -- instead of using it to improve people's lives through better health care, jobs, environmental concerns, affordable housing and affordable education?

Boy, is it weird that I happen to be watching T-3 right now!

Remember the B-5 episode where the machines killed all the enemies, then started killing everyone else - until only one machine was left and the entire population was exterminated? Seems sci-fi writers think of this stuff years before anyone else - and they know human nature well enough to predict what will happen under the worst of circumstances - where sociopaths are in charge, which is what usually happens.

Psychopathic corporations can only lead to one future - a dead planet.

Jconsult, I thought I'd post a translation of your first post as I think it is worth reading...

--------------------------------------------

that points out "Terminator" where the robots seized the power thanks to the stupid blindness of the soldiers and the scientists who want to always make the war increasingly effective.

One falls sick from there only to think that the USA spend more than 15% of their national product in the soldier whereas in parallel a great misery still exists in this country, richest of the world.

The human genius does not have limit. Who does not remember Hiroshima and Nagazaki where the bomb (American) killed out of the hundreds of thousands of Japanese. Tomorrow, the war presses button will become of such an effectiveness that one will not have to give American nationality any more to the robots like today one does it for the American Mexicans and others latino with which one promises the moon tomorrow in a wheel chair or worse in a cemetery in Texas or in Alabama.

The article presents at least 3 arguments that are moot given the ways and means of US militarism today.

The first point that these new robots could get into the hands of terrorists is a rather deceptive observation. Anyone who would make, no less intend to USE such a deadly THING IS a terrorist. And as KIVALS pointed out, there's a greater threat of it being used by its Frankenstein fathers.

The 2nd point is the idea that these robots would be "cost effective" as per the idea of "winning" a war. This begs the unenviable question, how many dead constitutes winning? If Iraq, a war of choice, is any example, then the decimating of its population through death and displacement suggests to this robot sect, a total denuding of the HUMAN landscape would constitute "winning."

Third, the article makes me puke with the false notion that civilians are somehow being NOT targeted by militarism today. CD has posted the statistics and they demonstrate that about 80% of war casualties TODAY ARE citizens. It says, "Teaching a computer-driven machine — even an intelligent one — how to distinguish between civilians and combatants," AS IF this matters!

Some good postings today.

I know there are already robots in Iraq, but I believe they are all flying robots (except for the bomb disposal robots) used for tracking a target, and at a remote human command firing on it. I am not a weapon expert, so if someone knows more please leave a summary of your knowledge.

In the end I think these robots may be like the Missile Defense Shield, which cannot truly hit missiles, or differentiate between decoys and real warheads. These robots have limited uses, but computer programming, can only go so far. Certainly a robot can kill everybody in a given area, but it can't make much in the way of strategic choices without direct human control. Also, these robots can only be on treads or fly with wings; they can't hover a few feet off the ground like NOMAD or the DALEKS, so in many situations they could be caught in a corner. Further those it's shooting at would not hesitate to destroy it if they had the firepower. It could also be deactivated by an E-Bomb, or some form of computer virus possibly deployed by a communication signal or projectile. If these robots were used to deflect protestors "passive resistance" would go out the window since there is no one to hurt. Protestors would use any weapons at their disposal to destroy these machines. Certainly the idea of artificially intelligent machines being used in war zones or domestic riots to kill indiscriminately is frightening; a nonhuman cannot exorcise thought of human rights or humanity, and the US would be more likely to go to war with less human risk. However, often the marketing is greater than the product. The best example is the Star Wars Shield, but another example is the militaries' attempts to develop a stun gun that doesn't do physical damage, a force field, and to create a transporter; no matter how much technology may advance you cannot create something if it defies physical laws, a force field and transporter both go against the laws of physics. It is arrogant to assume that human science can do ANYTHING. After all think of all the amazing things you can do with a computer, but how many times does it freeze on you. A more likely scenario and just as frightening is an army of robots that have automatic censors and limited artificial intelligence, but are mainly controlled by people remotely. This is just as frightening because it still makes war easier and less risky, inviting even greater conflict than we are already involved in.

Even more frightening to me are the microwave guns that can cause supposedly "harmless" rays of intense heat meant to disperse crowds. In reality it can cause cancer and destroy human eyes, but that will not stop the US from using it on protestors even though it's being built to use in war. I don't know how to fight or avoid a weapon that covers such a broad area, and will be so far away. Also, its long term effects are less obvious and the public doesn't care much about the type of people it will be used on.

WTF is wrong with these people. Haven't they any humanity left? The LAST thing we need is more ways to kill each other. As well, I guess these people aren't up on their science fiction as they're marching down the path of destruction that science fiction writers have been talking about for decades.

Well, let's say terrorists, our resisting colonials, or whatever you want to call them decide to rig up a bunch of traps for these things. The old trick of the bucket of water over the door -- put a bucket of paint instead. The thing is then blinded, the infrared sensors are fouled.

The captors can't simply control the robot, for that you'd need the right frequency, remote controls, etc. They might be able to disable it, and take any armaments off of it. Or perhaps lay a booby trap or tracking device on it.

No, this whole technology is like SDI. A massive boondoggle that only promotes more evil on both sides, rather than getting to the root problem of violence: gross economic asymmetry, a sense of hopelessness, and fundamentalist religious convictions -- in response to economics of empire, unchecked power, or other/differing religious convictions.

oh hey it's the clean up crew for when there's only mass murderers left on the planet. Welcome sparky and iroboMurder...

Seriously though, some bunch of mass murderers is planning on going under ground to survive nuclear warfare under the command of THE most murderous who had everyone of their soon dwellings laser armed for instant human evaporation. He'll be flying getting refueled robotically until there's nothing left of the surface of the planet, then he'll be some place remote monitoring the rubble by killer satellite drone...

I've already approached this philosophically, and the crux of the problem with robotic killing technology is THIS underlying asymmetry:

The killing is performed by machines, but the targets are still primarily humans.

This is the converse in some ways to vandalism, in which a human does damage to inorganic objects/property.

There are maybe 3 people he has every intention of keeping here and they're all just as crazy as him, and every bit as knowledgeable and still so very crazy.

The article sucks (terrorism?? give me a break -- more like state terrorism) but these battlefield robots have been in production for some time.

There is was the Predator drone, now being replaced by the aptly named MQ-9 Reaper that is already seeing action in Afghanistan.

The scary thing is the tech geeks drooling over these new toys (as Norman Solomon explains in War Made Easy) rather than raising the ethical questions about more human distancing from the consequences of war.

However, rather than Terminator we probably get the defective and trigger happy OCP ED-209 variant first. Here it is malfunctioning.

Immortality is a mo ficky. I should say the chase of everlife, really, not immortality as immortality assumes living forever inquestionably dominant. No there situation is more like total control loss for wreckmost greed of human living.

hazmat has got it. Certainly future aliens will be able to figure out what we were like by looking at our machines. We devise our weapons with loving ingenuity, for the same reasons we used to lavish scrollwork and ivory inlay on our swords and pistol grips. The ultimate in self revelation would be some variant on Jean Tinguely's self destruction devices, machines that beat themselves to pieces with hammers or machines that piss themselves off and blow themselves up. No doubt these artifacts will end up in some intergalactic museum of curiosities where they will provide cautionary information about what happens when a clever and murderous species claws its way to the top of the food chain, runs out of natural adversaries and finally has only itself to attack.

There are 850 million people facing hunger every day. We are seeing food riots in some countries, and the beginnings of water wars in others. And the US Dept of Defense thinks it needs to spend $230 billion on Future Combat Systems to develop land based and aerial robotic weapons systems.
I have seen the enemy, and he is us.

Siouxrose, It's Mars, indeed!

"Military leaders "are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war," he said."

How cool...a "risk free" war. So, to this I have one question...why even fight it if there is nothing to be gained or lost?

"The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. "And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger," he added."

This is truly one terrifying thought. No, they don't have emotions such as anger...or compassion. Anything on two legs with a color less than white is as good a target as any...right?

Look, this goes beyond belief...killer robots? Sheesh. So....what was it that used to appear on tee shirts across Murica? Oh yeah..."Beam me up Scotty, there is NO intelligent life down here."

Well, I guess everyone will soon have to carry their rremote control along with them, just in case they happen across a Killerbot!!! ...Ta-ta fellow.