"Arkin is working with Department of Defense to program ethics into the next generation of battle robots"

Yea right!!! ...and if one mistakenly slaughters a group of kids you need just debug the software and post a patch on your website like microsoft does with their OS. (a patch for the software that is, not the kids)

War Robots have already killed hundreds of thousands.

Some call them voters.....

War robots are another major step in the direction of sillyConValley();

In "Where the Wasteland Ends" Theodore Roszak describes in exquisite detail how the four varieties of Technocracy tend to push world history in the direction of a single unified Scientific Dictatorship...a global police state, as it were. In that dystopian end state the technocrats end up controlling everything and Her Highness Technology ends up controlling the technocrats. It's not a very pro-life situation...at least if you define "life" as human life.

The war robots are just one more instance of the irresistible tendency toward the supplanting of flesh and blood humanity with more and more logical circuitry. First it's the avatars and virtual bots of cyberspace in Second Life and other proliferating cyber societies, but then it moves out into the amusement parks and onto the battlefield in ever widening circles of encroachment upon the human and divine domain. In the end Homo Sapiens 2.0 will replace us all. Unless we wake up and do something.

Visit www.sillyConValley.net and take a stand for flesh and blood humanity.

Reminds me of the new "outdoor" activitiy called remote hunting where Billy Bob can sit at home drinking beer on his couch while watching a video screen and aim his rifle (that's set up out in the woods) at a deer (or anything that moves and half the things that don't move) and simply click his mouse and shoot. Makes me scared to go hiking out in the woods. Now imagine a cheney or blackwater doing the same thing. I'm sure this would be used more domestically on folks who disagree with this administration.

As you pay your taxes on the 15th consider this,43-51% of the visable federal budget goes to Wars, past and present,and the interest on those wars.Weapons systems ,nuclear weapons,biological,chemical,ray guns,airbourn drones,robots,and even more bizarre psych-ops stuff.Land mines and cluster bombs,space based weapons and "star wars "style missle defense systems.Many of these systems violate existing treaties,and the U.S. has refused to ratify many other treaties that would make the planet a safer place for everyone.
The Constitution guarantees freedom of religion.One of the Ten Commandments is: "Thou shall not kill!"so many other faiths say the same thing that April is a time of dispair for many devout and spiritual pacifists.
During the last 6 years we have also been supporting torture ,kidnapping,extaordinary rendition and the destruction of those very rights that many have given thier lives to establish and protect.
There is a Bill H.R. 1921 ,The Religious Freedom Peace Tax Fund Bill,that would allow people with religious objection to war to pay thier taxes and not support war making. Please check out, peacetaxfund.org and support this effort. impeach for peace

I'll support the development of this weapon system, if it's used to guard the Republican National Convention this year.

Shouldn't hit submit, really shouldn't hit the button... Really really shouldn't hit submit... Oh well.

For a few minutes there, I was worried. But I am so comforted to hear that these robots will only do "Ethical Killing". Just like in the ten commandments: "Thou shall not kill (exception: unless it is ethical)" or something like that.

The ethics are going to be programmed in by the anonymous U.S. researcher who said "If I don't work for the DoD, I don't work." I am sure that he will instill his own high ethical standards into the device so that we will have nothing to fear.

Too bad the "Three laws of robotics" were only fiction.

In my seventy years, I've noticed that science fiction often is a precursor to science fact. I think one should watch RoboCop and Terminator to get a picture of what may be our future path if we continue to develop AI killing machines.

Of course when the human rules of engagement seems to be "Kill them all and let God sort them out," perhaps it doesn't make much difference.

Can you say "Down the tubes?" I knew you could.

This is why we have to oppose war for more reasons than just the number of soldiers we have lost in combat. We rarely see or hear about civilian casualties in Iraq. Once our robots are doing the killing, will anyone read anything in the newspapers about what is happening?

A major plan of the Bush Administration has been to do whatever is necessary to reduce the number of American troops being killed because that is the main thing that influences public opinion in the United States. If a contractor death is less important than a soldier's death, then a blown up robot will get no coverage at all. However, the people being invaded and occupied will still be dealing with hot lead and chemicals being tossed in their direction. Too bad Americans don't care about other people or at least never read about them or see them on the nightly news.

"Arkin is working with Department of Defense to program ethics into the next generation of battle robots"

**the trick is programming ethics into humans.
That's always been the problem.

...precisely why I'm very nice to my toaster.

One day it'll be packin'--and I hope it remembers I'm its friend.

1) It will certainly be a LONG way off before we have AI sufficient to make any human-like decisions (like who is an enemy combatant). Then again, as we see in Iraq, who could make such a war-paradigm (every potential 'enemy') decision anyway in many cases where it is very gray?

2) Given we have enough trouble with out of control war-mongering, I doubt AI cyborgs of any type will ever be a wise thing for congress to authorize (or scientists to allow). Even with the best intentions for the use of techonology, there are chances for meddling and error.

3) Think of the uses of a 'cyborg of life' like 'jaws of life' that could save people after disasters. I think this would be a much better use of our ingenuity. I think if we have any wisdom we will be very conservative with creating any 'automous' robots of any kind however, and should be very limited in their autonomy until mankind grows up (and even then it has a dangerous side), say a few 10's of thousands of years from now?

"the trick is programming ethics into humans. That's always been the problem."

Well said. One could argue that the ethics of anyone willing to do the programming of these robots is already flawed and therefore they are unsuitable for the task. This would be a catch-22 for the DoD; they would need to find someone unwilling to do the job in order to get it right...

Are these things covered by the 2nd? Could kick-start a whole new season of "Robot Wars" with assorted autonomous home-brew weapons systems.

What kind of ethics are these people talking about? Differentiation like armed - unarmed, uniformed - civilian dress, skin-tone, gender, height? I don't know how sophisticated a programme would run these killer-robots, but I've got the feeling that'll basically be: kill anything that moves. I guess this is all we can expect from people who start wars on phony reasons.

I might go for these Terminator precursors, but only if they can also be programmed to "defend the Constitution from all enemies both foreign and DOMESTIC." Lots of little tank treads rolling up on Congress, the White House and corporate boardrooms! Oops! Too late. Skynet just became self-aware!

Hey, truthmonger

This might be just the thing for Cheney when he's quail hunting.

More and more I'm coming the conclusion that the best thing about the future is that I'll be dead.

Right wing nirvana: Intelligent robots guarding braindead consumption slaves connected to Matrix virtual reality programs.

Aye Carumba! This article is bad enough, then I read this:

Weaponizing the Pentagon's Cyborg Insects
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/31/7986/

…and from a few days ago, this:

Spy-In-The-Sky Drone Sets Sights on Miami
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/03/26/7908/print/

We are truly cyber-screwed!

Anyone ever watch the "Terminator" series of movies?

I just know that the boys at DARPA just wet themselves saying 'Oh MAN! WE JUST GOTTA BUILD SOME OF THESE!'

And any bets that the Miami 'sky net' (irony intended) will be used more to monitor public gatherings (i.e. protesters), getting airborne surveillance photos so the Blackwater merc backed 'police' can swoop in and cart them (you) off to the Halliburton built 'detention facilities'?

@Commentarian March 31st, 2008 12:34 pm
"It will certainly be a LONG way off before we have AI sufficient to make any human-like decisions (like who is an enemy combatant)."

I suspect US soldiers will wear ( or have implanted) something that broadcasts the fact that they are "friendly". I also suspect that as soon as the enemy start wearing the clothes of dead US soldiers, they will make it impossible to do that by disabling the device if the soldier dies.

Also, perhaps these things can be sent into areas where there is known to be no US soldiers.

@peace coup March 31st, 2008 11:54 am

You hit the nail on the head. That is why there is no chance of stopping these.

@bystander March 31st, 2008 11:34 am
"Too bad the three laws of robotics were only fiction"

I enjoyed reading them, but it seems Asimov was so far off the mark. With
hindsight, anyone could have figured out that robots would be used for war.
I did not enjoy 1984, but George Orwell, on the other hand, knew exactly
where we were headed.

One of Asimov's later robot stories had the robots in charge and enforcing the three laws. Hence, no human could drive because he might have an accident, couldn't have a knife because he might cut himself, no outdoors things like climbing or hiking, no contact sports, etc., etc. The hero's wife, who hated it so much she tried suicide, wound up in a rubber room on heavy tranquilizers cuddling a soft toy so she couldn't possibly get hurt or hurt herself.

Orwell's 1984, London's The Iron Heel, Lewis' It Can't Happen Here; all of them were pretty prescient, and all of them heard a chorus of "This is the United States, it can't happen here, we're a democracy!"

Riiight!!!!

We live in a world of human laws not mythical "robot laws".

The human rules are, many people will gamble their last dollar and their last child on winning a war. Then they'll sell their souls.

Great numbers of wars have started out with some sense of ethics. Then people got real and the wars almost always deteriorated into ethics-free beastiality.

Examples:

World War I was rather cheerful at the beginning, with both sides sure they would triumph quickly. "Our medals they would shine just like a saber in the sun" --Billy Bishop Goes to War. The first Christmas in the trenches, many soldiers of both sides met in no man's land and declared a Christmas truce.

Then as an entire generation died in horrific style, they invented poison gas. It didn't seem to help much, and then the other side used the same technique. More death.

At the beginning of WWII the Nazis were magnanimous in victory over France, if perhaps a bit showy. By the bitter end, the Germans pulled out the stops, preparing to blow up Paris rather than let the Allies have it, working millions of innocents to death or killing them outright to save a few shifts at guard duty. Our side in turn firebombed millions of civilians in order to save a few extra American and Russian soldiers in the final weeks of the war. The nuclear firebomb was, for the leadership, a logical progression of this tactic.

Now we get to the mass production of guns with computer chips and wheels. What do you think will happen?

After our puffy military and their academic helpers prove out the concept, won't the next Al Qaeda download the programming and build their own intelligent killing devices? More likely, won't a wingnut sell out the plans to the next Al Qaeda just as the previous generation sold the U.S. Bomb to A. Q. Kahn? We also have the receipts for the nerve gas recipe we sold to Saddam Hussein.

After we invent killing machines, how do we track down the human planter if a killing device was left on site a year ago?

If I were the U.S. I would think long and hard before either inventing or deploying any weapon that equalizes every other country, terrorist group and lone robotics clown in the world.

Hey you, the poor guy who the fool-in-chief ordered to spy on the American people: Clones are inherently anti-democratic. The little dum-dum decider isn't going to be in office very long, so you'd better start working early for President Obama and slow down the clone wars on the inside. I don't care if you're "inside" and we're on the outside. It's the same country. Suck up your Christian beliefs and do the right thing for your country.

Tragedies like Columbine and Virginia Tech would have been averted had these unobtrusive peace keepers been installed in our war nation's schools.

Great idea Ghawar, but one wouldn't suffice, perhaps nor 2 or more, so to save costs I would suggest one big tank-sized bot per school.

Useful for Wacos and other wackos too.

An idea how defeat these remote controlled killers.

When you see one in your neighborhood, get a volunteer to draw its fire, the come in from behind, get a shovel or lever under the treads and flip it on it's side. Then pull the battery.

Bingo.

Now you have a SAW level machine gun and ammo, maybe a grenade launcher too. All yours. And a tactical radio with the latest cypher software.

OOoooooo. The fun to be had. just like the 300 tons of high explosive that wandered off early in the occupation. I wonder how much of that went to IEDs?

I don't see any evidence that we are near AI technology. It may not be possible. Your computer may be able to do amazing things but it can't learn or think even in the most basic way. More than a decade ago I heard about Spelling Correcting software that was supposed to recognize words, but it still isn't here. If we can't achieve this true AI is centuries away. Of coarse remote control robots are also terrifying, but why aren't we using them now instead of soldiers, because it isn't practical. These robots run on treads and can easily get trapped, and can't compete with a real human's maneuverability and response time. Hovering NOMAD type robots are even more unlikely, as are humanoid robots. However, a fixing many of these engineering problems, and creating viable remote control robots is much more likely than autonomous AI robots, but they are AT BEST a long way off.

Isn't the progression from the will to kill in war to the use of autonomous robots inevitable? The idea that it is justifiable to wage war follows from a set of assumptions: One's own camp needs the land cleared of obstacles in order for us to thrive; either we kill or we die; We are slaves to our technology because They have the same technology, or will eventually get it. We and They. Why is that an issue? Scarcity. The world is in play. Shifting ratios of consumers to resources.
We (some of us) harbor a dream of freedom, but They are thwarting Our dream. How do we define freedom? The war industry is getting to be the only game in town. And our condition within this society requires us to struggle and compromise for our living, and it could always be worse, and since we're lucky enough to be alive, we better count our blessings and fight to extend and improve our lives, and that's our freedom. And maybe we're obsolete, be we're not ready to die yet, not before Our Time.

I can see it now. One action-packed 24-Hour-kind-of-day, the remote-controlled heavy-metal Stryker-style War-Bot roars up to the front door of a target building. It deploys microwaves into the building that make everyone inside burn in their skin. The occupants come running out screaming in pain, where they are blinded by lasers to the eyes, rendering the enemy helpless.

As they stagger around blind, they are all gunned down by the WarBot's .50 caliber gatling guns with infrared-heat-seeking controllers. The Bot then rockets the building to powder. Finally, its work at this location done, the War-Bot quickly growls away to its next target building, having completed its mission of quickly dispatching all those dangerous kindergarteners that were growing up to be terrorists, and are now 'prevented' from doing so. An ounce of 'preventive war' is equal to a pound of cure, it is said.

Or, alternately, we could just do what we are doing now. Just drop a bunch of dumb iron bombs on them. But that's not as much fun, and not near as profitable to the manufacturers of said Bots.

War Robots are a really zippidy-doo-dah way of protecting the nation. These little darlings can also do the job of protecting a political party and its politicians against unruly citizens. They can also terrorize into submission another rival political party, like in some anthrax scare.

The ethics that are to be installed in the War Robot Program are the ethics of the owners of the War Robot, as machines are totally amoral. In other words, the programmers will be directed to program the machines with the ethics of the dictating war leaders like George Bush or Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld. That is, the killing machines will have the ethics of immoral bloodthirsty pirates. The first directive - kill 'em all!

And forget about that Russian 'nuclear war robot' computer that almost launched the entirety of the Russian ballistic missile fleet towards America, until one single Russian colonel over-rode the robot, and saved the world. So we don't need to worry about any problems with Robot War Machines. Do we.

Ghawar:

In re: "Tragedies like Columbine and Virginia Tech would've been averted had these unobtrusive "peace keepers" been installed in our nation's schools"

Oh man that's the kind of reasoning that's been hyped throughout the centuries to justify out-of-control spending on increasingly complex "defense" technology.

I don't know if you're aware of this, but Columbine residents experienced a double tragedy that day.

The first was the hamfisted response by the Columbine police, who did a "My Lai" number (free fire zone) spraying thousands of rounds of ammo indiscriminatedly at the school building!
http://www.thememoryhole.org/

The second: the coverup of that tragedy by officials who directed that the truth be buried (classified) and never to be discussed with anyone; the parents, the public and the media were deceived.

BTW: you might want to review Micheal Moore's "Bowling For Columbine." It's essential to an understanding of the pathos of the American death worshipping culture.

With morally bankrupt leaders like George Bush and Dick Cheney and an ample supply of vacuous researchers willing to develop anything for a buck, it is naive to assume that we won't go on endlessly developing these lethal weapons.

quoting from the post:
"We can say no. And if enough of us say it we can ensure robots are used for peaceful purposes."

However, most in the robotics community feel this is impossible as most robotics research is funded by the Defense Department. Says one anonymous U.S. researcher at the conference, "If I don't work for the DoD, I don't work.

"morally bankrupt researchers like this one what hope is there that we won't build these?

When I heard the article about the spy drone, then heard a bunch of my idiot conservative friends defend It, I thought to myself, these people aren't going to get it untill a personal microchip tracker is shoved up their ass by the government. And even then, they'll be defending it.

kelmer nailed it; the humans not the robots are the problem.....and it is hard to concieve of robots with less discretion or morals than the murderers pulling the triggers now.

I mean, those million+ dead Iraqi's did not commit suicide.

Galen; or camouflaged pits......

"Anti-Landmine Campaigners Target War Robots"

Why?
These things will 'target' our own Coalition/Iraqi-troops far more than any 'resistance-fighters', anyway (with lot's more 'friendly-fire' incidents for the Pentagon to have to cover-up?).
Instead, buy some stock in the TN-outfit preparing to sell AA-12's/'auto-shotgun-sweepers' for these-things, and then buy yourself some 'foodstuffs' with your profits...(it will do you/yours more 'good' than trying to stop DARPA/et al).

Some of you think that the robots lack sufficient artificial intelligence to distinguish good from evil, but you forget that next year we will all be carrying National Identification Cards. The robotic peace keepers can rapidly scan all the ID cards even in a big crowd and pick out those individuals who need to be monitored closely. Two peace keepers, monitoring a subject from different angles, enjoy just about perfect insight into s/his intentions.

These mechanical officers are not only humanitarian but they're cost savers too. For example, it will no longer be necessary to incarcerate political loudmouths. They will be able mix with society the same as normal people without danger of spreading stupid ideas by restricting them from speaking. Even in a crowd, a mechanical officer can scan the suspect's National ID Card to read and then enforce the no-speech restriction on s/him.

Now I want to go comment on the swarms of bio-mechanical insects which also are causing some confusion here.

What next? War and killing from computers where you can just zap someone who doesn't happen to agree with your political views -- someone in a militarily weaker country with darker skin and whose nation has natural resources that the U.S. covets?

If the U.S. would spend more of our tax money on projects to improve lives in this country instead of inventing all sorts of high-tech gadgets to kill others with, the world would be a much better and peaceful place.

The U.S. under right-wing death squad rulers has become a scary place. Their insane philosophy is to kill first and let God sort it all out later.

In related news on Yahoo, the Wii remote is now being used to control bomb disposal robots.

Hmm.

How easy would it be to use the same toy to control a killer robot?

http://www.techeblog.com/index.php/tech-gadget/samsungs-200000-machine-gun-sentry-robot

for sale!?

"and no fear of disobeying their commanders' orders in case of bad orders..."

The #1 reason robotic armies are bad is because the commanders, especially at the very top, are VERY bad. If they can get a couple hundred thousand regular Americans to murder Iraqi Dads and Brothers and even Moms and Daughters, as has proven real, just imagine what they can do with a fleet of robot attack jets.

With regard robot attack jets, even if they make them human controlled, they'll be a simple software swap away from flying autonomously.

transfer of army tech to police means that these will be coming to your home town soon.