Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’: Expert
Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.
“They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.
There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.
The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.
But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.
It we are not careful, he said, that could change.
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.
Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.
South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.
Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.
James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.
The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.
Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. “I don’t know why that has not happened already,” he said.
But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.
“I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.
Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.
But he is not convinced that robots don’t have a place on the front line.
“Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement,” he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.
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.
Nor is there any inherent right to self-defence.
For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.
Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine — even an intelligent one — how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.
But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.
Arkin points out that the US Department of Defense’s 230 billion dollar Future Combat Systems programme — the largest military contract in US history — provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems.
“But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponisation of these systems,” he said.
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.
© 2008 Agence France Presse
“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.
Even scarier is the Pentagon’s plan to capture Big Foot and clone a Sasquatch army that can be delivered via satellite laser telebeams!!!
Take that, terror folks!
Once you “buy” the theory that we must always live in a war of all against all, then everything becomes justified in carrying out the war.
However, we have the ability to live in peace.
Stop buying the “we must live in war” crap.
All the bombs are in the hands of terrorists — and that goes double up for killer robots.
Geezuz H Particular on a pogo-stick this is obscene!
Why worry about “The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern . . .”? Since when did the use of weapons by terrorists represent a serious danger to humans?
For example, nuclear weapons: deaths by government using weapons = 150,000 to 200,000; deaths caused by terrorists using nuclear weapons = 0.
Civilian deaths caused by “terrorists” in the 2006 Lebanon-Israel war = 60; deaths caused by government = 1000+
Deaths caused by terrorists world wide in 2007 = 5000; deaths caused by capitalism every day = 5000
Terrorism is a threat like stabbing your self to death with a pencil: it can happen but if you look at the statistics and then compare it to the figures for dying in a car wreck, will you be more scared of a pencil or a car?
Wow! Silly me, I was worried about terrorists armed with box cutters.
The most deadly robots known to the human race are in charge at the white house. All you need is a robot that can say ‘Protect us from terrorists’. And they want to make the rest of us robots, by controlling the information we are fed by the media. The media are already under near perfect control. The development of mechanical versions of killers is an expression of deep dissatisfaction with the human variants. The specter of Omnius arises. (the masterful ever-mind robot in the Dune science fiction series). Fortunately, so far the intelligence capabilities of the electronic kind cannot even match the befuddlement that passes for thinking in presidential circles.
You want real terrorism?
Google Arctic methane gas ___ then scroll down to the article titled ___”Arctic Methane Gas, A Ticking Time Bomb”.
That issue is BY FAR the most serious problem humanity has EVER faced in our entire history here on Earth. You wish to get excited enough to blog comments on a website, blog on that issue.
Now if you don’t have children and don’t care about what is DEFINENTLY GOING to happen in the next 50 years,____ unless we fight it,____ worry about military robots falling into the hands of terroists and rave on.
Paul,
A simple countermeasure to the bucket-blinding of the robot would simply be for the robot to simply respond by firing a solid 360 degree spray of bullets - killing everyone - noncombatants, children - in the vicinity.
the US army then simple explains that this was unfortunate collateral damage, but it was the “terrorists” fault, because they wouldn’t sit passively and let this machine come through their door and mow them down.
ROBOCONGRESSMAN or ROBOCOMANDER-IN-CHIEF
Alas, what ever happened to Pet Rocks?
This makes me think of the ultimate AI weapon.
From the movie “Dark Star” by Stanley Kubrick.
At the end of the movie when the self-aware bomb decided he/it was God and said “…Let there be light!” And there was.
bye bye humans…
Or my favorite song by the “Flight Of The Conchords” - “The Humans are Dead” sung by a couple of robots.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGoi1MSGu64
One day it will be too late to say, “Enough is enough.”
Why don’t they have to disclose these montrous things to the people before they become reality?
I think there should be a public investigation into the amount of papers that our congress sign into law without reading!
I understand that the congress signed the Patriot Act into law without even reading a tenth of it. That is a national travesty!
I say the whole lot of them should resign. But the sheeple don’t even know what is happening. They are obliviously eating and drinking themselves to death while this house of cards tumbles all around…
Anyone else feel as though your on deck watching the Titanic in its final throes?
One day it will be over. Really over, and it won’t be human terrorists that end it for all of us.
Isn’t this article supposed to be in “The Onion”?
Wow, I can’t believe this is actually reality.
—“And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger,” he added.—
Or such as, say, compassion.
Honestly now, do you really think the Pentagon gives a rat’s ass what we armchair intellectual windbags think? Of course not. Fully automated hi-tech killing machines with mini nukes,chemical weapons, etc. are most likely already being tested, manufactured and deployed with avid enthusiasm. There is no turning back. Get used to it. No amount of liberal hand wringing, pissing and moaning will change anything. I wish this was not the case! But there will only be more and more of these insidious killing machines in our “brave new world” in the coming decades. I feel sorry for future generations…hi technology could eventually make mankind obsolete.
NONDESCRIPT
i beg to differ: ‘dark star’ was not a stanley kubrick film. it was made by a bunch of college students in the early 70’s as far as i remember. and is now a cult following.
PAUL BRAMSCHER
re: ‘vandalism’ - yes, it’s the machines getting even with the humans….
KEM PATRICK
‘one day it will be over’…..it needn’t have been. but what’s sadder is the fact that we’ll go out with a blot on our copybook…………
Anyone remember the mid 1950’s movie, ‘Gog’?
Funding these weapons is more important than universal health care.
Death has become art.
PERCEPTIONEXPERIMENT
i looked at your website. i like it. there was one phrase pertaining to the robot killers that caught my eye: ‘they will kill without mercy and without compunction’. i can relate this sentiment to employees of slaughterhouses……………..
These robots will never take off! Why? Because humans love to kill other humans themselves, love to pull the trigger, see someone’s head splattered all over the place.
Humans are killers, primitive beasts. Just watch a few rounds of that Extreme Sport if you don’t believe me. Those guys become prehistoric, savage animals in that round cage and so do soldiers on the battlefield.
Man is a dangerous creation!
www.dangerouscreation.com
Peace Through Superior Firepower . . . . The American Way . . . .
If you can’t shoot back you had better be running because the operators of these things are miles and miles away. And they don’t care . . . . The best bet, have superior firepower yourself . . . . If you don’t believe that then you have already given up. So bow down.
“The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern . . .”
WAR ITSELF is terrorism!
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace,
by Richard Brautigan (1968)
I like to think
(and the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
where mammals and computers
live together in mutually
programming harmony
like pure water
touching clear sky.
I like to think
(right now, please!)
of a cybernetic forest
filled with pines and electronics
where deer stroll peacefully
past computers
as if they were flowers
with spinning blossoms
I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.
Who,me,worry- We alreadyhave killerrobotics by the thousands - they call them gyrenes or jarheads.
*Star Wars Theme*
A Droid Army? What’s next, a Clone Army? GOD DAMN POLITICIANS!!!!!!!!!!! If movies like “Star Wars,” “I Robot” and “Terminator” aren’t enough to show of the things that could potentially come about, then I don’t know what will create an impact!
Honestly, creating killing robotics is an act of terror itself. When we have other million man march, the police are not going to be patrolling the rally, oh no, it’s going to be those goddamned robots. They can just as easily be programmed to turn against the very people they are supposed to protect.
WHY DOESN’T the US Military EVER THINK OF THE ETHICAL QUESTION??? As if Imperialization in the 21st Century weren’t enough, now we have to make it EASIER to do so? You want to know why Americans are hated by foreigners, it’s cause Americans believe they are arrogant, selfish-never considering the other person’s point of view esp foreigners, and because America has so much influence in the world, they think they can do anything and get away with it and there will be no repercussions. Now don’t get angry from that analysis, as an immigrant to the U.S I can pretty much tell you this is how it is, for the most part.
It’s time we correct our image in the world and BAN ROBOTIC SOLDIERS! Imagine the respect, the applause, the jubilation! We would once again be the “curve setters” so to speak.
NELSWIGHT
for the ‘uniniciated’ can you please tell me what ‘gyrenes or jarheads’ are. thank you
coco
no Patrick: The most important issue isn’t the methane gas in the arctic, the most important issue is the continuing murder of Iraqis. That is happening today, not tomorrow. Get your priorities right.
I believe that one of Asimov’s stories described the automatic construction of aircraft and bombs - from the smelting of the ores, the construction and maintenance of factories to the automatic flight of the aircraft on bombing runs over enemy territory.
The enemy was doing exactly the same thing. There were no humans.
We’re getting there.
coco,
gyrenes and jarheads are U.S. Marines.
It’s a lot easier to remove a battery from a “killer” robot than it is to de-energize a politician.
Don’t forget that CONGRESS holds the “power of the purse”! Consequently, they decide if the DOD will get the money for these “killers”. Frankly, I think we should be more concerned about the behavior of our congressional leaders than these robots.
The fact is, machine-made robots are much easier to control!
Stop worrying. The work in progress by a little known DNA company in England will save us all.
The plan is to retrofit Glowworm/Firefly DNA onto the foreheads of all politicians, doctors, religios leaders, etc.
The design is supposed to be a normally pale yellow glow which changes to blinking red when subject is disingenuous.
To refuse the retrofit would indicate an intent to deceive.
Should cause a flurry of ingenious new headwear design.
a “risk free war”….a “risk free war”….sorry Will Robinson this does not compute….
Look for war games being played near you…in your back yard…on your soil …. in Colorado and New Mexico….soon
The scientists and tech geeks are not our friend, never have been, and never will. These morally defunctive humans exist for the inventions in finding new ways to kill. Tell me just one thing that these so-called geniuses have ever accomplished for the good of mankind. one thing. Best scenario: these robots turn on their inventors and then maybe we can have some justice. always about how to effectively kill our human brothers, never about how we can help with food, housing and medical care.
I’m amused that such crappy journalism is taken seriously.
There are legitimate questions that can be asked about military robots … but pondering their emotions or the idea that they’ll become conscious and attack us is just stupid.
In case you’re wondering I’ve been working with machine intelligence for over 15 years and I can promise you that unless there is a MAJOR change in how computers work in general there is ZERO chance they will turn terminator on us … in any case we’re safe as long as we have Schwarzenegger to protect us.
But I’d be happy to send this guy a nice big “The End Is Near” sign to wear on a street corner.
Also, in case you’re wondering I am VERY opposed to any kind of autonomous military robot … not because of their intelligence, but because of our stupidity.
Microsoft can’t get windows to be bug-free and I don’t think the programmers of these robots will do any better.
The TSA has already promulgated new regulations providing for the confiscation of Transformers™ or Power Ranger™ action figures carried by juveniles. If such items are discovered on board, it’s a straight shot to the Wee Terrorist Wing at Gitmo.
I’m not up on current kiddie action heroes; this is the best I could come up with off the top of my head.
They may also outlaw paint.
This headline, and story, remains surrealistic to me even though it stands to reason that technological advances will indeed lead to the creation of autonomous automatic weapons systems (entities?), and I likewise suspect that there’s a parallel push to simply remanufacture physically damaged soldiers with advanced prosthetics and return them to combat.
I’ve read creepy Newspeak psychological opinions that promote recycling soldiers who are traditionally discharged and pensioned off as disabled. They point to gung-ho soldiers who are, um, dying to get back to the war, arm or no arm, leg or no leg; they cast this as a sort of win-win outcome, insofar as returning to duty is a positive goal which motivates people to work harder at therapy, adjustment, etc. And negative psychological moods, states, or disorders, e.g. depression, anxiety, withdrawal, alienation, etc., which may fester when a soldier is released into civilian life and loses the structure and “support” of the military, and the companionship of his combat buddies, are minimized. It actually sounds “sensible” in a soulless sort of way.
So, before too long, we may have home-grown Borgs, or platoons of stormtrooper droids being controlled by a pasty lieutenant holding a Cheeto-stained controller. Hooray for our side!
PS: The notion that this technology would be used against Decent Folk by Them– the terrorists lurking in the shadows– is laughable. Bullshit with gravy, on toast. This kind of weaponry will be rolled out by Uncle Sam or the professional mercenary corporations first, indubitably.
PEACEMAN
thankyou for your reply. i still don’t get it…….but let me try: gyrenes are marines (rhymes) but why don’t they just call them marines? and jarheads. well, is it because they wear jars on their heads? sorry, but i cannot apply anything to this terminology……i’ve tried but i’ve failed.
i am a ‘foreigner’ and do not understand alien speak. i would appreciate a translation………….
Has anyone told Sarah Connor?
“Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.”
[Yeah — “It’s what they do…”]
~LIZARD~ I understnd that you are a practicing medical doctor, have a PHD in Geology, and are also a scientist of some type. That all according to your prior posts here at Common Dreams since being banned from another progressive site. You are a very busy fellow LIZARD, having blogged comments over 80 times on Monday alone here at Common Dreams. I don’t know how you manage it all, or how your medical patients you described do either. However, all of that that aside, I humbly disagree with you.
I agree that the unnecessary deaths of any Iraqis, because of our unjust and also illegal war and occupation of their contry is indeed important, it should never have happened. There are many other important worldly issues which should be addressed and corrected.
How-some-ever, the one issue whch is of the most extreme importance and one whch will most assuredely kill not just a million Iraqis, but will snuff out ALL life on our little planetary biosphere, is the eventual release of the frozen Arctic’s methane gas into our atmosphere. Now that is assured, unless we address that most serious problem and do it soon. It is a truly serioius problem, unlike this terrorists ever getting their fingers on our military robots and that being a threat to humanity.
So for you to tell me to set my priorities ~Lizard~ is rather like your other obnoxious posts, where you denied global warming even exists, you agree with the head of General Motors, that Global Warming is nothing but bull shiit. ___ Of course you are dead wrong.
Hi ~COCO~. It’s because they have their heads shaved when they first get to basic traing. They are “Jarheads”. Then I understnad it may have had somethng to do with the military hats they wore many years ago. They and the sailors often brawled and the term “Jarhead” would often set off a bar-room fight. The sailors didn’t like the Marines because the Marines always controlled the stockade, or brig, or prison, and they treated sailors very brutally.____ They still do.
So what else is new? This is just a continuation of the American violent solution to ‘problems’ that has been used since Europeans showed up in the western hemisphere in 1492. Unfortunately most Americans know next to nothing about this violent past and still regard the US as a lumbering giant trying to ‘fix’ things. For a look at some of this history and the devastation it has caused go to
www.amoralamerica.info
free download
All you “progressive liberals” keep on asking the government to take care of anything and everything from cradle to grave and they will .GLADLY.
Looks as though they came up with a back up solution to all your problems.
“That which governs least governs best”
to paraphrase Thomas Paine
Please research: read “The Bilderburg Group” by Daniel Estulinor go to his web site.
http://www.danielestulin.com/?op=noticias¬icias=ver&id=318&idioma=en
or watch Endgame:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1070329053600562261
These people are the REAL PATRIOTS .They have and are risking there lives every day in an attempt to make the public aware of REALITY .
THE GOVERNMENT IS NOT ON YOUR SIDE.
THEY WILL NOT PROTECT YOU.
THEY WILL KILL YOU.
Have a nice day.
Or go to Infowars;
http://www.infowars.com/
The Terminator Series was brilliant three anti-war anti-nuclear weapons movies. A lot of people miss that point about them.
About four years ago I picked up a magazine (can’t remember the name, something I had never seen before) and on the cover was a very frightening picture of a “warrior”. The headline was something like “What War Will Look Like in 2025″. The article was about all of the research and development for the US Army. I had never before thought about that before. “At this moment somewhere in America someone is making money by thinking up and creating new ways to kill ‘them’ and protect ‘us’. It will never stop”, I remember thinking. It was Christmas time at my parents-in-law and the magazine was in the powder room. And every time I went to pee there was this friggin, horrible picture and story. I remember I drank a lot of bourbon that Christmas. And it’s always stayed in my head. We will be extinct, one way or another, in about 150 years, I think. Tra-la, Tra-la!
coco,
Like KEM said above, the origin of the term jarhead had to do with the type of hat they wore, as in a ‘mason jar’ (for bottling cooked food) or else by the close-cropped haircuts.??? The term gyrene is possibly a combination of the words GI and marine.???
Get used to surveillance cameras mounted on every street corner in every city in every nation on the planet.
To process the video, Intel will be pumping out CPUs and memory chips by the billions, and San Francisco will get new paint jobs on its Golden Gate Bridge every year to the delight of the tourists and residents.
Perhaps killer robots should be programed to defend the people of Darfur.
Would killer robots ever have PTSD?
If I had to make a choice between having my kid in Iraq or a robot….send in the machines!
Does anyone know if these robots are available with a lawn mowing attachment option?
David_78,
I missed comments regarding robot “emotion” or robots becoming “conscious,” though that may have been implied with references to works of science fiction. However, it would seem a significant danger would arise from any number of possible scenarios, including those similar to the following:
(1) Country A (as in USA) develops more and more sophisticated military robots in order to plunder weak nations (e.g. Iraq) with minimum casualties.
(2) Country B (e.g. China or Russia) has an interest in the natural resources being plundered and develops its robots (copying where it can) to help the weak nation resist.
(3) Country A institutes an intensive robot arms race to stay ahead of B, incorporating more and more AI and probabilistic reasoning. Though the technical problems for complex tasks are daunting, with computers and robotics if one person somewhere in the world solves a problem, the solution can be instantaneously copied in innumerable platforms. And Country A would likely engage in more and more fundamental research on nanotechnology, possibly new exotic forms, with increasing parallelism for maximum speed in decision-making and to enable more generalized problem-solving.
(4) Country B responds and intensifies the robot arms race, copying what it can. The technology becomes more and more developed and widespread in its application.
(5) Country A recognizes that the most effective means for success would involve directing its robots to eliminate key humans in Country B. And Country B responds in kind. And the robot war continues with increasingly aggressive measures, with no natural stopping point short of human extinction.
Another scenario could involve computer systems with information processing and decision-making capabilities vastly superior to that of humans, leading humans to turn over decisions with regard to robotic weapons to such systems, with unpredictable outcomes.
Now we are merely at the beginning point of such an arms race, and the easiest way to stop it is to work on a treaty banning robotic weapons. The further we go along, the more momentum it will have and the more difficult it will be to stop.
AHHHHHHHH run the killer robots controlled my the terrorists are coming for us !
Is it just me or does the fly in my room sound more threatening then that?
Was that article intended to be satirical?
Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’: Expert
Yeah - How about 10,000 nuclear warheads on top of rockets on computerized hair trigger warning status. Does that sound like a dangerous robot?
I agree heavyrunner… a machine gun attached to a remote control vehicle seems like childs play compared to the vast arsenal we are all sitting on here in the USA!
depends on whats in the lawn that ‘needs mowing’ i geuss. 200grands kinda spendy for a lawnmower tho’ …
Coming soon, The Terrorist Stepford Wives.
Not too expensive if you’re a CEO of Exxon or Halliburton.
Allen Weisman’s “The World Without Us” seems more inevitable.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. On Violence
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate…. Returning violence for violence multiples violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. “
Listen. And understand. That terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are all dead!!
so when will the real skynet become self aware??!!
You just described Dick Cheney, is he the Terminator?
“Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’: Expert”
It took an expert to figure that out? D-duuhhhh, that’s the very idea!
Kill kill kill! the only drawback is you don’t get to actually feel the life oozing out of the target - right? But, man, the explosions are really cool! Love to see that cloud of blood go poof! More fun than a tomatilla festival!
That’s how sick you are.
Here’s an very interesting, funny, and actually informative book that people interested in this topic might find useful. I own it, and really like it:
How to Survive a Robot Uprising: Tips on Defending Yourself Against the Coming Rebellion
by Daniel H. Wilson
http://www.amazon.com/How-Survive-Robot-Uprising-Defending/dp/1582345929
Ultimately, Frankenstein turned on his creator.
When do we fashion swords into plowshares?
I was thinking about Frankenstein too but ‘A voice apart’ beat me to it.
So I’ll just point out that Frankensteins will be what rogue robots will be called.
A rogue robot? Yeah…the ones who get taken over by a enemy hacker and turn their guns back on their creators.
Or maybe they’ll be the robot machine gun which used a Diebold programmmer?
Hell … is made for our kids to live in. I’m glad I’m old. What mercy is to be found in the heart of a killing machine? None we are told. That is the point… we are …assured.
Evidently we are fast creating Frankensteins everywhere (Franken foods). Hearts? No problem… these robots will use our hearts… we don’t intend to use them either.
No one mentioned the nazis. They’d have fashioned robot exterminators. Well… sadly… just give it time.
Yeah kiddies… I’m glad I’m old.
I salute all of you, fellow humans. Your comments are beautiful and make me proud to be a creature of flesh and blood. Now let’s think this through as real human are wont.
The sheer irrationality of the robotic plan bowls me over.
Let’s see. According to Jacob Bronowski, “War is organized theft.” That’s right. Whenever we want our neighbors’ resources, we concoct some excuse that resonates with the tribal-impulse that evolution programmed our brains with and voila! The country unites behind the leader. And we proceed to plunder.
Now, let’s step back and ponder the value of this commodity—one worth stealing, worth killing and worth dying. It follows that this resource must be not just priceless but _necessary_ to our survival. Therefore, no expense is too great. So, if these silly machines cost from $150 to $200 _K’s_ per unit and we plan to manufacture thousands, it follows that the commodity we seek must be worth much more than the cost of producing these units.
What could this priceless resource possibly be and who will profit once we acquire that commodity?
Instead of war and investment in killer robotics, what if we invested our money in R&D to synthesize that commodity? Surely we could find a more cost-effective way to either reverse-engineer that commodity or invent a substitute. Are we that lacking in ingenuity? Or does sociopathy have deeper roots in the human condition? Such that it is considered more acceptable to kill others for their resources–despite the fact that in the long run it would be more cost-effective and less lethal to find a substitute.
This robotic plan makes no economic sense. But it has its definite pathological value…
Those who concoct these plans remind me that there may already be robots among us. Nay, monsters.
I’m buying stock in Old Glory
http://www.robotmarketplace.com/video_oldglory_hi.html
Shades of Robocop! This is another in a long line of goofy elaborate schemes to extort our shrinking dinero on the unchecked passions of coddled scientists, engineers and military skanks.
One could also say that Iraq is now yesterday’s war and this bumps it up to a newer war ow taking shape.
#
catseyes February 27th, 2008 12:04 pm
“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.”
Catseyes, this is exactly right, and a point which I have made on various posts. If the body bags stop coming back to our countries(the US and UK), then the majority of people will not be concerned about how many innocents we murder and maim, or how many countries are destabilised or destroyed.
This is just one step closer to making war “acceptable”.
PEACEMAN AND KEM PATRICK
thankyou both for your explanations. this is for you:
www.dailymotion.com/video/x26109_marvin-gaye-save-the-children-set-1
coco
David_78 “I’m amused that such crappy journalism is taken seriously.
There are legitimate questions that can be asked about military robots … but pondering their emotions or the idea that they’ll become conscious and attack us is just stupid.
In case you’re wondering I’ve been working with machine intelligence for over 15 years and I can promise you that unless there is a MAJOR change in how computers work in general there is ZERO chance they will turn terminator on us … in any case we’re safe as long as we have Schwarzenegger to protect us.
But I’d be happy to send this guy a nice big “The End Is Near” sign to wear on a street corner.”
Its not stupid. You seem like the typical tunnel vision scientist. Im less concerned about AI-controlled robots than Joe soldier sitting
in a bunker somewhere and blowing shit up like it was a playstation game.
PEACEMAN AND KEM PATRICK
oh, how embarrasing……….i’ve just clicked on the link i sent you to make sure i had got it right…..it’s not what i intended. i don’t know how that happened but i apologise. (however, kem will probably like it…)
sorry guys. it was supposed to be marvin gaye singing an old but poignant song from 1973.
coco
David_78 The article doesnt say that robots will start attacking us, it quotes one guy saying that hes worried about machines behind built that make the decision independently wether or not to “terminate” someone. I missed the part in the article where robots “have emotions” and “become conscious”.
This is soooo amerikan and of course israeli. Just as the protoplasmic citizens of these pariah nations become more robotic in every way….their machines are becoming …dare I say ….more “human”.
What will the zionazi elites in tel aviv and washington do with their armies of brain dead protoplasmic uniformed killers (the quaint “our troops” which has always excused serial amerikan genocide) once these automatonic widow-makers are unleashed against the humans?
It’s gonna be a great future when the geriatrics roll out these abominations on our filthy mean streets.
I remember an old Star Trek episode called The Doomsday Machine.
The idea of these type of killing machines was alive and welll way back in the 1960’s. A machine cannot distinguish targets. No target is ‘friendly’ to an automated killer.
Anyone that would actually construct something like this qualifies as a “Master Of War” (to coin Bob Dylan)
The human race is inhernetly self-destructive. These machines just put us one step closer to our own inevitable self-destruction.
Why should we spend so much money for a fighter robot when the real solution to our problem could be less expensive? How much would it cost to manufacture a President (just a clone based on Bush Junior in order to save money)? Certainly much less than what the US Army will pour into the robot investment.
If we consider the 3 rules of robotics (cf Asimov Robots:
1.A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. / 2.A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. / 3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.), we can say for instance that:
• This new Robot President would not have gone to war in Iraq not to injure a human being as I think that an Iraqi guy is still a human being.
• This Robot would have obeyed to the Americans who wanted an end to the war in Iraq
All this to say that our scientists should devote all their energy to solve human needs instead of inventing new destruction tools.
As usual, our military planners and the scientists who do their bidding learned exactly nothing from the Simpsons’ experience at Itchy & Scratchy Land.
I, on the other hand, have duct-taped a disposable camera to the inside of my groin.
I’m as devout a futurist as the next ‘droid, but I can’t help wishing that the scientific community was not in thrall to the Masters of War, and was instead devoting its time and talent to perfecting personal bubble-copter technology and harvesting plankton as an abundant and tasty food source.
Mercifully, none of these robots yet resembles the governor of California. The worst is still to come.
“It is in your nature to destroy yourselves,” said The Machine.
And they discovered that they weren’t even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, “Tralfamadore.”
jconsult-
For that matter you could replace the entire US Congress with a bunch of bobble-head dolls.
One nightmare scenario is that after the robot arms race proceeds to some point the corporate fascist US government decides that its robot soldiers could serve as police officers in the US. And it warns the citizens that in order to make sure they are not perceived as a threat by the robot police (which is programmed to immediately neutralize all threats), the citizen should have a chip implanted by a government lab that the robot will be able to read from, over a distance, that will identify the citizen as non-threatening.
Of course the fascist government will retain the ability to write over the information on the citizen’s chip, from a distance, and to reclassify a citizen as a threat if the citizen engages in what is deemed to be suspicious activity. Citizens could remove their chips, but over time citizens without chips will be identified as threats anyway.
Then groups of citizens (”terrorists”) may try to capture some robots and reprogram them to attack the government and its robots. And then there may be a revolution that escalates, but either way, a living hell.
Let’s just hope that civilization collapses before these things are used any more widely than now. Without oil, and without cheap energy, the ways of war we know will be no more.
That said, it might be worth looking into making yourself a HERF when the robots start hitting the streets where you live.
Aryan (male) Supremacy; Racialized Human Slavery; Gender Slavery; Massive child abuse (installs free-floating rage); Constant war; & Genocide.
When these operate as the primary drivers for a society, abominations abound. Not surprising, it is a psychotic model of life. I see these six as THE primary behavioral drivers for American society. Humans are food here. We’ll do anything to anyone - medical experiments, rape, mental/physical torture - and that’s just high school. What would you expect we’re going to do to invisible “strangers”?
We have the values of cannibals.
If there are some who disagree and think these six do NOT drive the behavior of our country then ask yourself this:
“How easy has it been for the Masters to destroy the Bill of Rights and shred the Constitution?”
“How difficult has it been to curtail Aryan (male) Supremacy; How difficult has it been to eliminate racialized Slavery and Gender Slavery?”
These weren’t just social mistakes. All six represent DEEPLY HELD core operating values. THAT’S WHAT AMERICA BELIEVES…
This is merely the beginning of the End. Before this monster collapses we, America, will do things to humans that will make you despair of a loving deity, if you haven’t already. We were a rum bunch.
Peace.
Does it really suprise anyone that these murdering bastards would do this? Hell, they probably got the idea straight from “Ah-Node” himself.
I mean think about it… These are the same “fine patriots ” and “public servants” that for the last 30 plus years have been knee deep in every single evil thing our government has had anything to do with. Period.
From Iran Contra, and arming death squads that rape nuns and throw them out of hellicopters in Central America, to training and funding Bin Laden and the Taliban, to supporting and supplying weapons to Saddam Huisein, then claiming he was “evil” when he actually used the weapons that Rummy and Reagan gave him to kill his own people. And then when he refused to “play nice”, we attack him because he was a bad boy and threatened to flood the market with cheap oil (Hmmm, funny, that sounds sorta like Hugo Chavez).
And now today they spy on us, shred our Constitution and Bill of Rights, pre-emptively attack nations and murder a million people… opperate secret black site prisons that torture and murder in the name of “democracy”…
Gee I’m just stunned that they would stoop to such “imorality”. -They seem like such nice guys.
Listen people, we need to wake up, and see things for what they are. Our government has been taken over by a corporate cabal of traitors and murderers, and unless we stop them… NOW, All we are going to get is more of the same. And we can all talk about the “good old days” and kiss what’s left of our freedom goodbye, as we wade through more mind-numbing bullshit stories about Paris and Brittany… and we can watch idley as what’s left of our country gets handed over to “our good friends” the Saudi’s and the Chinese.
….But I could be wrong I suppose. Hmmm. Maybe they really do have our best interests at heart ???.. Perhaps I’m overreacting. Yeah… that’s it. On second thought, I think we should trust them. -Nevermind
Interesting discussion. Good points raised. Thank you especially to: VOXCLAMANTIS, JD SMITH, HEDOLOGY, RT DRURY, & KIVALS.
MT FISH: Good laugh on your point.
FPAL: Thank you for relating King’s genius, he sure understood the whole dynamic. His words echo those related by the sages of Ancient China as per the oracle known as the I Ching. In kua (hexagram) 43 (ironic, as that’s Bush’s # as prez) the subject of EVIL is explored and the wisdom of the I Ching is evidenced in its understanding of the perpetual nature of violence. In parallel with the teachings of Christ, as per turn the other cheek, the I Ching explains that evil can never be fought by any direct means, for to do so entangles the person of good intentions in acts of evil. (Fighting terrorism with terrorism, i.e. US sophisticated weapons and the abominal numbers of civilians killed and passed off as collateral damage.) The I Ching makes it clear that the way to transcend any evil circumstance is to take energy away from it by investing in OTHER solutions.
We all (in this forum) recognize the repugnant waste of so much blood and treasure being devoted at yet the latest method of murder; whereas civilization BEGS for energy systems that would sustain human (and other) life. Instead of fighting cancer, providing REAL food and less stressful existences would help far more than effectively declaring chemical war on the body through “chemo.” Notice how the US under enthrall to MARS and this focus on violence in films,as well as in US foreign and domestic (our prison numbers) policy ALSO influences the practice of medicine where the vast majority of problems are treated by CUTTING or POISONING, i.e. acts of violence. Other nations have medical models that nurture a person and support the NATURAL healing aspects of the human body when it’s given optimal support.
This article is pathetic chicken little drivel! We need no more fear robotic weapons than we needed to fear horseless carriages(cars).
How about a little perspective. Are robotic killing machines really much of a threat compared to nuclear weapons?
People die horribly in wars. In war, there is nothing but sudden violent death. The Bush White House treats death as if it were a video game. Everything is a game to this White House. It’s enough to make you sick.
Suppose Abrams tanks were robotic? A single person of age ten, with a bottle full of gasoline and a lit rag could destroy one if there are no ground troops to protect the tank.
Now these unmanned “Preditor” aircraft, which carry bombs and missiles, can fly for hours and see everything, day or night, are true robotic killers. They can be flown over Afganastan and be perfectly manuvered by a pilot who is sitting in a war room in Toad Suck, Arkansas. I doubt they will ever be taken over by terrorist however, and be a threat to humanity.
Great link COCO thank you. BTW, we also have “jarheads” in our Congress. Lots of them.
DavidJames “This article is pathetic chicken little drivel! We need no more fear robotic weapons than we needed to fear horseless carriages(cars).
How about a little perspective. Are robotic killing machines really much of a threat compared to nuclear weapons?”
cars are not new military killing technologies. Nuclear warfare, as bad as it is, will probably be a one time thing. We need to pay attention to it, but it doesnt mean it should be our only concern.
Robotic killing machines, on the other hand, will be a regular tool in the military toolbox. Allowing militaries to kill people without the risk of losing lives on their side. It dehumanizes war. One could even conceive of a targeting system that texture maps civilian targets as military targets, to remove the remorse felt by soldiers and remove inhibitions. That is not far fetched considering american assaults on places like fallujah with soldiers reporting that everyone over 18 was considered an enemy combatant.
I’m gonna get one of those (legally available) 50 calibre target rifles that can hit things a coupla miles away, and get some armor piercing ammo. Yeah!
See where all this can lead? Good luck, all.
A cannon would be more “fun” ~CATCH~. 20mm WW 1 anti-tank cannons are available too.
Excellent points CATSEYES, it does de-humanize war and killing other humans. Sort of like being a bomber crew, fire bombng a city. The burning people are out of sight. They aren’t killing anyone, they’re just releasing bombs.
You can be sure that as well as developing robot soldiers, the USA is also working on space weapons, biological weapons, genetic weapons - anything nasty you can imagine (and a lot that the non psychotic, non military, non gun-loving mind can’t). All this killing, will of course been done at a tastefully and piously remote distance. No blood on our hands, they will say. We were thousands of miles away. (They already do: drone operators kill villagers in Pakistan from rooms in Florida.) Equally you can be sure that American and British news outlets will report these dispassionately, with just a tremor of excitement at the thought of all the sexily lethal technology. No suggestion that this is the terrorism of the 21st century, and we are the terrorists.
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.
Robot Warriors…”They wil be back”
I wish people would not go along with the media’s definition of terrorism being “them”.
Most definitions of terrorism do not have a clause to exclude states (or the USA in particular) from being a practicer of terrorism. The FBI definition of terrorism is typical:-
“The unlawful use of force or violence against persons or property to intimidate or coerce a Government, the civilian population, or any segment thereof, in furtherance of political or social objectives.”
So to quote from the article “(Robots) “ould easily fall into the hands of terrorists” makes no sense. Robots were created by terrorists. They are currently in the hands of terrorists.
Ghawar — When you mentioned “the bot enforcers could be rigged up to detect mendacity and deception. Imagine, an end to lying,” I thought about how safe it will for the public, as they’ll have so many viable targets in the military and politics. So sad, too bad.
Support Our TroopsSupport Our Killer Robots
I’m still looking the reality of threats like biological weapsons, disease, nuclear weapons etc….
When the imaginary weapons become problematic they can join the list of other stupid weapons that threaten our existance of which nothing will be done.
Siouxrose,
Thanks for doing what you can to make CD a warmer community.
Thad Stone,
“Support Our Killer Robots”
Hilarious!
Ghawar,
I certainly hope that was sarcasm. As Lord Acton said, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” If someday there are police robots with the abilities you describe, within a New York minute they would be used for the most diabolical purposes imaginable. We would be truly screwed.