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The crucial point about AI is the training they need. Unless the americans have been collecting data for decades (given how few armed conflicts there are and that each one is different from the one before) there won't be any realistic scenarios for the AIs to learn from.

And how do you think they train real flesh and blood soldiers in teamwork, tactics and so on, without risking their lives for real? Ah, that's right, they use a game. Yeah, ok, that's probably a fairly small part of their training, with a great chunk of the rest being physical training, group bonding, inculcation of muscle memory (think time spent on the firing range) and technical training. Robots don't require any of that stuff because it comes under the guise of engineering, manufacture, and basic algorithms and programmatic rules. The experience that makes good soldiers, whether they be made of flesh, blood and brains or plastic, metal and neural nets, can be learned through virtual environments.

It would also be quite easy to defeat AIs that had been trained - just do the unexpected, as all gifted military leaders do.

Although once they get past the initial phase of monumentally screwing up everything they touch - another facet of "superpower" military might - they could easily develop new strategies.

I'd say it's a given that the first generation of fully autonomous 'battle bots' will comes with some 'interesting' quirks, and woeful gaps and oversights that will only become apparent when properly tested in the field of battle. I say this not to contradict what I've said above but because it's practically impossible to make things foolproof as fools are so ingenious - and there are no fools like military fools.

The best strategy would be for the AIs to decide that the battle isn't worth fighting.

No, the best outcome, should we (bah, who am I trying to fool... when we) develop these things, would be for them to decide the battle is not worth fighting. There is no best strategy because strategy is always dependent on what the other side does. For example it might be argued that the best strategy would be to develop these 'tools' ahead of everyone else then forbid their development by anyone else, using such force as necessary to ensure compliance. However, given that this is a potential best strategy the best strategy for everyone thus becomes rush to develop these systems as fast as possible to prevent becoming a permanent underdog in global affairs.

Which is kind of where we find ourselves today.

Personally I've never been particularly convinced by the notion of mutually assured destruction, but it is an oddly rational irrationality and seems to have held the world to a certain level of both stability and balance for the last 70 odd years. Patriotism aside, let's just hope that either the 'hard problem' doesn't get solved in our lifetimes or that, in solving it, the balance is preserved...

Am I the only person who thinks that this is going to be used by kids wanting to make games about shooting up their schools, or even worse, terrorists planning attacks in major urban centers?

The Army already has their own game, so it's not exactly far fetched fiction at this point.

https://www.americasarmy.com/

It's a game. It is supposed to be fun. If you want gritty realism, why are you looking at a Star Wars game? Go play America's Army

The government cannot outright condemn it. In fact they support it, in the open, http://www.americasarmy.com/

Who plays America's Army!? http://www.americasarmy.com/

It's called America's Army. And yeah, that's pretty disturbing.

I'll just leave this here http://www.americasarmy.com/

Whiny article. All complaints, no solutions. I reached the end of the article expecting another page which would discuss how real world weapons should behave in games. No such luck.

For a better analysis, see Gatling Good on TVTropes. Also More Dakka.

America's Army has realistic weapon mechanics, of course. (It's sponsored by the U.S. Army). Players have complained about that.

On the other hand, the Military gets tons of Cash and they have NEVER released a video game.

If America's Army had you hold your breath, then they were violating their own marksmanship rules.

It didn’t.

Sorry, but it does. Please see this official manual for AA3. Search it for the term 'breath' and you'll find a section called 'Holding Breath to Improve Accuracy' wherein it describes how when you are 'in sights' aka zoomed in, you can press the space bar to 'hold your breath' to stop sight drift from breathing.

Beyond just the manual, this is part of the training modules and actual gameplay, which is what I was originally referencing. Have you actually played AA3 to speak so authoritatively and yet so incorrectly?

You should give America's Army a try, it's totally free via direct download and Steam. Plus there are custom peripherals available (http://vae.americasarmy.com/), to enhance the experience.

So, where does America's Army (http://www.americasarmy.com/) fit into your list?

In fact, you're not far from reality, they use America's Army, for that...

Why not tell FPS players to quit wasting their time and join the army??

Isn't that what the America's Army games do? All 3 of them?

http://aa3.americasarmy.com/ - AA3 is the most authentic military game ever.

Maybe you want to try ArmA which has a *much* wider scope then.

http://aa3.americasarmy.com/ - AA3 is the most authentic military game ever. We don't just say "every detail counts" because it sounds good. We mean it and Army Experts checked every aspect of the game to ensure it's as authentic as possible -- from weapons to sounds to player movement.

maybe it has to do with competing in the same game market as the us army? I've played america's army since 2004 it is both fun and entertaining. this game would be able to take off if they simply called it 'desert battle sim' instead of trying to pull actual battles from RL. I must say it is a neet idea but dumb, considering its exactly what AA3 is doing.

Check this out and then look at the US Army and tell me killer games are bad. I mean US soldiers don't act anything like that.

Why is it wrong? It promotes education in the sciences; it's a way to get kids interested in something else besides the Power Rangers or whatever it is kids watch these days, something that might make this world a better place for a change.

Education matters, you know, and getting kids to set their sights on things like these keeps getting harder. Specially in times like these, that are so harsh on people's dreams.

From TFA:

...the ultimate goal of his team is to inspire generations of future space explorers...and encourage game players to pursue careers on science, math and engineering careers.

As an aside, don't worry about the gaming companies. Free, government-sponsored competition doesn't seem to have stopped production of FPS games.

Off-topic: my captcha is "rectums"

America's Army might run on your hardware. It ran fine on my PC back when I played it, and all my hardware is at least 6 years old now (PIII, GeForce 4, etc.) I was playing back when it was in the 1.x versions however, and now it's in the 2.x's. I believe they're using a newer generation of the Unreal Tournament engine since I last played. I don't know if you can still play the 1.x engine online.

It was a very polished game for being free. Being released by the US army as a recruitment tool, it was obviously quite realistic. You went through basic training first, and could only become a sniper if you passed with really high scores, etc. Combat is very team oriented (limited number of each player class available per level, etc.) and realistic (when you die, you have to wait until the mission is over to come back, etc.)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America's_Army

Between that and Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory, I didn't have to buy a PC game for at least a couple years... back when I still had time to play them.

Anyone into America's Army?

I haven't seen any DRM there.

Umm, America's Army is produced by the US Army, not the USAF. Hell, the US Army logo is everywhere in that game. Two very separate branches of the US armed forces.

I just knew there was a catch to getting to play http://www.americasarmy.com/ for "free". Just brings a whole new meaning to "special forces"..

Or where certain peoples didn't teach their kids that murder and death are good things to aspire to:

All you Liberals out there need to stop excusing their evil and open your eyes.

The victim had a traumatic avulsion of one of his digits, that means an open artery and people with open arteries can bleed out scary fast, even from a finger or fingers in this case. Yes it's probable the victim would have regained his wits and preformed life-saving self-aid, but surely someone had to and in this case it was a first responder that learned first-aid in a training game. A better account of what happened is in the forums at America's Army.

Well, it's not a press release, it's "according to the video game publisher", which really means posting to their webforum the complete text of a newspaper article (http://forum.americasarmy.com/viewtopic.php?t=271086) and the gamer in question also appears to be posting in the thread, so can't we just feel good about this?

"...Granted, it hasn't happened yet..."

It hasn't?

http://www.americasarmy.com/
?

Americas Army - http://www.americasarmy.com/

War

Oh wait. That violence is ok.

...be America's Army? Realistic weapons, realistic scenarios, realistic combat. All provided by the US Army.

What about their America's Army itself?

What about this: http://www.americasarmy.com/

It has a focus on terrorism, realistic weaponry, combat and team tactics. Shouldn't it be first up against the wall?

On a related note, I can't wait for the new America's Army Death for Above expansion pack!

Yes, stopping kids from getting their hands on violent video games will be the magic bullet that stops violence, aggressive behaviour, bullying, etc.

The practical effect of this seems to me to obviously be that people that want to play violent video games will now just get them through non-official channels - ie, they'll pirate them. Or download any number of violent video games that are made available for free on the Internet to anyone in the world.

Politicians - please stop wasting your time and our money and get back to doing something else. Leave the parenting to the parents and let people accept some responsibility for their actions, eh?

Perhaps residents of San Francisco and the surrounding Bay Area should be aiming to arrest the top brass of the US Army. They've got a video game http://www.americasarmy.com/ and many of the missions take place in San Francisco. Now, I know when I was in high school, there was usually an Army Recruiter that came around at lunch time to talk about the good life... and well, I bet they just might have this game on CD and be passing it on to potential recruits. Even if they don't, given that it is a free download, imagine how many students are sniping people and launching RPGs in the streets of San Francisco every day!!! I amazed the city hasn't fallen to rubble yet.

It's too bad they shutdown the project

Did they? Not accoring to this site here:

http://www.americasarmy.com/

"Normal people have no problem separating reality from fantasy, and thus no amount of "fantasy" killing will actually train them to kill in real life or be desensitized to real life killing."

Guess not.

Even here in the US, in the right circumstances, even the first amendment wouldn't help us. How many times has it been trampled.

What will protect us though, is that the US government has its own violent video game. http://www.americasarmy.com/

So true, anyone who thinks that CS will prepare you for accurately shooting a weapon, or pressure under fire, is on crack.

including these guys?

Haven't you seen it yet?

They are. It goes both ways I think: http://www.americasarmy.com/

Yes, but in AA, you can never be the terrorists. Your team always appears in US issue clothing, and the enemies in hoods and masks. Obviously, it can't be used for training terrorists then.

Don't know about Counter-Strike, but check out this free one. :-)

http://www.americasarmy.com/

Doh!

They are. It goes both ways I think: http://www.americasarmy.com/

Tracking the download down on the army.mil search was useless. A web search with http://vivisomo.com/ got me the pertinent links, should have used it from the get-go.
Don't know anything about how one version is different from another but you can get 'em here:
AA:Special Forces (Direct Action) Vesion 2.5
http://www.army.com/games/aa/

America's Army: Special Forces (Overmatch) v2.7
http://www.americasarmy.com/downloads/

They have computers now? That means its just a matter of time before they download all our secerets!

I have heard this argument before when I was a kid. A friend of my mothers said the same thing about me going paintballing and playing laser tag games every weekend.

I might be inclined to believe there is some truth to it if I had grown up into a gun toting psychopath but as it is am a boring pacifist who finds all violence abhorent and campaigns against a war in any forum they possibly can (see previous slashdot rants)

With hindsight I think that by the time I reached me early teens I had learned to differentiate between fantasy and reality and so I knew that the repurcussions of me shooting my friends with a laser tag pistol or paintball gun were very different from any repurcussions I might have faced if I had shot them with a loaded firearm.

Interestingly though the American military obviously agrees with some of the points made in the parent post as they currently publish my favourite video game (Americas Army) for training purposes. I like it for its realism but I think that eventually the US army will realise it is not actually helping recruitment as most of the people who play are neither US citizens, nor are they prime candidates for military service.

PS - Anyone who likes first person shooters and hasnt played it can find a link to the AA site below. Check it out.
http://www.americasarmy.com/

For everything after Vietnam, the tech is just too advanced for it to be much fun. For most wars, the game would consist of lots of missions with objectives like, "secure the area around the already-bombed target. Don't worry, everyone's probably dead, we just want you to check", and, "accept the surrender of some surviving tank crewmen. We blew up all their tanks from 50 miles away, and they're waving white flags, just go put 'em in zip ties and get 'em back to the POW camp".

A real dad would be playing America's Army.

http://www.americasarmy.com/

Developed by uncle Sam, for the people.

In America's Army, players who violate the rules are sent to an online prison. "You are in the United States Army Disciplinary Barracks at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas..."

So when will these new robots start appearing in the game?

Does any of the bills address the Pentagon's usage of video games as a recruitment tool? Last I heard, the military can't even wait for students to get out of middle school before signing them up.