Slashdot Mirror
Robot Wars
EyesWideOpen writes "According to this New York Times article (free reg. req.) the Office of Naval Research is coordinating an effort to determine what it will take to build a system that will make it possible for autonomous vehicles (in the air and on the ground), or A. V.'s, to serve as soldiers on the battlefield. The project, called Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman, would consist of a network in which the highest-flying of the A. V.'s 'will communicate with headquarters, transmitting data and receiving commands. The commands will be passed along to a team of lower-flying A.V.'s that will relay them in turn to single drones serving as liaisons for squadrons of A.V.'s.' The article also mentions that the A. V.'s will have the ability to send high resolution color video as well as still photographs using MPEG-4 compression. Pretty interesting stuff."
Won't these people learn? Didn't they see the Terminator? Don't they know if they build this it will come back and bite them in the ass? Haven't I asked enough questions for one post?
Believe in things of which no person has ever learned
In order to be pollitically correct are they going to build a female version called MinuteMaid?
(B) + (D) + (B) + (D) = (K) + (&)
does anyone else hear the soundtrack of Terminator 2 when they read about this?
::.. check out some Cell Phone Reviews
Autonomous sounds scary.
At times when armies to the "Wrong Thing" there are deserters. With robots, or especially autonomy, that sounds rather scary.
I think Terminator's (the movie) vision was a bit too far fetched, but it brings up a good point. It's a *really* cool idea, but we best make sure someone has tight control over it.
===
Are you reading this?
Sounds like the Bolo, Mark XX to me.
http://www.iislands.com/hermit/bolo.html
"...Multimedia Intelligent Network of Unattended Mobile Agents, or Minuteman..."
Tell you what...ditch the robots, get someone who can make cool acronyms and go from there.
For example: B.A.D.A.B.O.O.M.
Ballistic Aeronautic Destructive Assault Bullet [which has a tendency to be] Overly-Optimistic [in it's] Massacre.
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
So what they're going to do is basically conduct future wars like in certain RTS games- i.e. we see in certain RTS games in FMV footage, that "you" are some guy controlling remote units via some terminal in some concrete bunker.
This of course has been predicted by many SF authors for years, and even surpassed where we have the case of AIs continuing to generate units and attack each other long after all the humans are dead.
Karma will now be dispensed, yea! I say, dispensed to those posters who can cite authors and works as examples of this.
graspee
And they can use that wonderfully accurate facial recognition technology to differentiate between good and bad guys and kill the right one.
They just started playing adds in the movie theatres for T3, Rise of the Machines.
It looks like the army is continuing their new public relationship actions of making the forces look cool.
...to think about this. It seems that it could possibly become the exclusive means for fighting wars in the distant future, which more or less flies in the face of the concept of war. As I see it, in the past, the goal of a nation at war with another has been to cause it the most casualties, thus preventing the other nation from defending itself against further attacks. With this method, however, (bearing in mind that we're in the distant future) the robots could be turned out quickly and cheaply. There would be no concept of morale among machines, and no loss of manpower to a nation that suffers great mechanical casualties. Does this alter the idea of war, making it a longer, more drawn out affair?
Additionally, someone commented that the system would not be impervious to a hack attack launched against it (what system is?). Thus, the concept of wars being fought almost exclusively from a command prompt comes into play (I seem to remember this being a hot topic not too long ago... power grids taken down at key times, etc). I suspect that things such as these will have very interesting ramifications in the way that war is fought...
The official web site. The quality and the amount of information on this web site seems to indicate that this project is in a very early stage, i.e. they haven't really done much. The links on the side mostly go to other UCLA departments. Altough, they do have some interesting looking demo units available. They don't seem to pack much of a punch, though ;).
Maybe somebody from the project is reading this, and can provide some real information?
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a 747 filled with CD-ROMs.
(OK, I admit it, it's time to get a grip on my total fixation with robots)
You be the judge
It is high time we put a stop to the needless waste of human lives. Our sons have fought victoriously in war after war, and we as a nation have paid our dues in full. It's time to let the robots step in and do our dirty work.
Also, I see no reason to limit the applications of this technology to peacekeeping and stablization of foreign lands. Once it's been tested for several years against hostile populations, we could bring a scaled-down version back home, for use in some of the high crime areas of the US.
People complain about how cops and soldiers are unfair, well we can program fairness right into them. They can't be bribed, don't have prejudices, and they're bullet-proof.
Also, we are starting to develop the technology to grow body parts and organs. Why not incorporate the two? Give a robot cop some real human hands, for superior weapon-handling skills! We could even breed entire brainless bodies, equip them with computer systems, and put them on the street. Economical and effective, and our children don't end up dying for some empty slogan.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
We should be working on clones! Clones, man, not droids! Droids suck!
Tell you what...ditch the robots, get someone who can make cool acronyms and go from there.
Like these guys?
But won't they get pissed when they find out what the royalty payments are?
Well war ethics are going to have to be completely re-written if this happens, because previously the idea was that to win a war you had to send some soldiers to their death. If we don't have to send in soldiers anymore then the American public will be easily distracted from our hideously hypocritical foreign policy decisions since they don't actually have to worry about their sons and daughters.
I dunno. Ask a soldier.
If, 30 seconds later, your ass hasn't been kicked, thank him for his restraint. :-)
> I guess the little suckers could go where men could not and do things that men would not...
Yes - that's precisely the idea. Robots are a force multiplier - you can send them on high-risk missions that you wouldn't want to risk a man for.
In that sense, the use of robots in war isn't much different from robots in space exploration. There are some jobs (like geology on Mars) that a man might be better at than a robot. There are many, many, many jobs (like mapping the entire Martian surface, or missions to the outer planets), where the robot is the right tool for the job.
I am far less worried about hacking then some people seem to be. What I am worried about is that they will obey commands. I mean what happens when say these are sent against Cuba, but the General/Admiral decides that he really want all of south florida to retire in, and captures it with his drone army. Normally it isn't possible becuase American troops are (suposed to be) loyal to thier country first and not thier officers, but now you are reducing the number of people needed to enable a coup or power grab. Less people is both easier, and more liekly to be sucessful.
I'd do something interesting, but my server can't handle a slashdotting.
I really wish we just decided we weren't going to be the monsters who open this box. It's worse than the A-bomb. At least an A-bomb had a relatively confined kill zone.
I'm sure I'll be dead before things have a chance to get so bad, but why are we in such a hurry to do this?
I Believe The Robots Are Our Future
Besides the aweful acronym, we already have a weapons system called the Minuteman. It would be a damn shame if some top brass ordered a test of these robots and launched our ICBMs instead.
-B
While this story isn't really new (we already have flying drones, cameras, etc.), I have to say that I am disturbed by it.
If robots are put to use as our new soldiers, what restraint will there be on those people in the military who are already too eager to send our forces overseas to police/invade/kill others? No one will complain that their sons/daughters are paying with their lives, and it will only make it easier to engage in armed conflicts. This is the nightmare of the future, when everyone sends their robots to fight each other.
There will be those who say, "but anything that saves our boys from dying is good." But this is not a sustainable policy -- it's not ethical for us to want to come up with a force that is only to our benefit, so that we can fight without the consequences of fighting. If everyone took that position, we'd be fighting all the time.
The true sustainable solution would be to work on the real causes of conflict in the world, and spend our billions of dollars to try to educate and help peoples so that we're not the target of violence. I tell you, it's much more efficient than trying to put out the fire once it's started. Why can't people see that long term issue, and work on that, rather than just coming up with new/better ways to kill others in the short term?
if (target.headgear == "turban")
{
FireDeathRay();
} else {
GlowerMenacingly();
}
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Everyone knows all you have to do is fly your ship into the hangar of the mothership and destroy its reactor, and all the drones will cease working.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
...I think they should call them Terminators.
Why can't robot contests on TV use explosives and machine guns? That would be far more interesting than a big hatchet that never does any real damage.
True, you couldn't have a live audience, but who needs them anyhow?
Table-ized A.I.
Cordwainer Smith wrote about this, sort of.
The simple truth is that interstellar distances will not fit into the human imagination
- Douglas Adams
Let me give some possible scenarios. After reading the scenarios, tell me if it sounds plausible for real-world use.
/., somebody tell me how many variables are in a live battle. What happens when the system is exceeded? Suddenly, the information that is new needed for combat can not be transmitted because it does not exist.
Scenario One: System has tracked enemy troop movement and friendly troop movement. Enemy troops and friendly troops clash in battle. At this point, on the grid, everyone looks like they are in the same place. There's no way to distinguish friendly from enemy. As the combattants regroup to different geographical points, an airstrike arrives. There has been no time for communications to propogate to the system which group is the friend and the enemy, and it is doubtful that the system has a database of the facial structure of every single friendly in our forces. What happens? Does the system pick randomly one group and tell the autopilot to bomb that group? Does it use probabilities? What is the acceptable margin of error, when that error is a 1000 lb bomb falling on you? Who in our government decides the number of our own solder that we can kill and still think it is ok?
Scenario Two: The system is flying above a battlefield. A situation develops that the programmers of the software running these things never thought of. How does the system react? Please, and I speak mainly to any combat veteran at
I ask you, would you trust an unmanned computer to shield you from a live machine gun pointed at you? I wouldnt. A manned computer, maybe, but not unmanned.
SELECT * FROM users WHERE clue > 0
0 rows returned
I'm sure the orange juice company would get their lawyers into that fight pretty quickly.
Infuriate left and right
If you haven't noticed, the majority of casualties from recent wars have been from *friendly* fire. Plus we stopped the draft, so every soldier out there ASKED to join the military.
We of the American Public couldn't give one rat's ass about what the military does, in a capitalisitc sense. We've got moral and fanboy caring, sure (I personally find a just war morally necessary sometimes, and the geek in me says "yeah!" whenever it hears about a new high-tech way we've waged a war), but not a capitalisitc measure--War does not, in any way aside from slightly higher taxes, affect our everyday lives.
Well, except for that NYC and DC thing 11 months back. If Pres. Bush had said "we need more soldiers, we're going to swarm the entire subcontinent and put and end to this" myself and most of the peopel I know would be in the military right now.
My company does Department of Defense work almost to the exclusion of everything else. Believe me, when you do R&D for the DoD it is *really* important to get an acronym, and fast. Sometimes you get the acronym first and then design the system around that. You won't sell them on anything without one.
Ask them whether they could perform as well in a far worse environment (than /desert/, for cryin' out loud), like urban warfare, with as few losses and when the enemy knows the objective is "regime change" and not merely a limited acquisition of land that they don't care THAT much about. Or, whether they'd appreciate having some automated assistance.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
The ALV was basically an unmanned tank. It was a much bigger problem (visual recognition of terrain and route plotting). I do remember they had a couple of prototypes. The tech ended up being of more interest to smart car people.
Better yet, this one could serve as inspiration:
D.R.O.I.D.E.K.A.
Deadly Robot: Opportunistic, Intelligent, Destructive, Killing, Autonomous.
Anything that gives a Jedi a run for his/her/its money is pretty spiffy.
I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
-- Military school Commandant's graduation address, "The Secret War of Lisa Simpson" as found on the best Simpsons site http://www.snpp.com
Failure is not an option. It comes automatically enabled in every Microsoft product.
Blizzard Entertainment announed its entry into the military control software market.
Our advanced unit control interface will allow the easy, dynamic control of a large number of military units of various types. Unit divisions can be formed on-the-fly allowing for easy regrouping of units.
Our revolutionary interface provides not only visual information but also features our advanced Aural Notification of Unit Situation system (A.N.U.S.). Simple audio queues inform the operator what military units are up to both on and off screen. Aural queues such as "daboo", "zug-zug" and "work completed" will inform operators of the current status of infrastructure units and codes such as "We're under attack!" will provide data pertaining to attack units.
a3c6 0e89 b1ec aa4d d630 26c8 d07e 7eed 8148 5503 02b4 dfaa 9922 b28d 0820 c4af
Anyone remember the game ROBOTWAR by Silas Warner, the same company/author that published the first Castle Wolfenstein? You wrote small AI scripts for your robot and put them on a battlefield and they duked it out. It all ran on Apple ][ machines.
I pictured the government robots making the 'plink plink plink' sounds of a Mockingboard-C...
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
or better yet:
if ("turban".equals(target.headgear)) {
FireDeathRay();
} else {
GlowerMenacingly();
}
since I sure wouldn't want my war robot going mental because of bad pointer arithmetic
---- Den ene knappen er powerknapp, den andre er Bender voice knapp "Bite My Shiny Metal Ass"
What would you rather have in the line of fire in a war, humans with parents and spouses and children, or robots? Seriously...think about that a little. Human beings are going to fight wars whether we like it or not...why not minimize our human casualties? Certainly it would be neater (in both senses of the word) if both sides fought with entirely cybernetic armies, but better a robot lay its metal ass on the line rather than a human.
Imagine if all conflicts were settled with Battlebots/Robot Wars-style bot fights! That would rule! Gives new meaning to the term "Rock 'em, Sock'em Robots!"
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
The question of whether killer robots are moral or amoral is in my view a complete waste of time. Once you've decided to wage war, you want to win it (note that I'm talking about *war* here, not peacemaking and peacekeeping operations, which are frequently confused with, but are completely different in character from actual war).
The United States has become a leader in warfare technology precisely because the American public values the lives of its sons and daughters. If our opponents had access to this sort of technology (assuming it works reliably and effectively) they'd use it. Would the Chinese government have used human wave tactics during the Korean War if it could have used less horrific means of persuing its military goals? Of course.
I'd make the suggestion that if the technology exists, and you don't use it, you're willingly killing more of your own and potentially of the enemy as well.
Which is more moral?
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Putting dirty words into that is waaaaay more fun than it should be.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
Yeah, I'll accept that your original question ("do we really have a problem with casualties") wasn't meant the way I took it. My bad.
But I think your followup question (even though it's intended rhetorically :-)
> Ask the countrymen of those ware torn areas if the US needs any new military weapons that will enable them to dominate over any other country in the world.
War's not about asking your adversary (or enemy) what he thinks your army should be doing.
"Pardon us, Mr. Bin Laden, do you think it's a good idea that our troops be better-trained, better-equipped, and better-armed than yours, thereby achieving seriously kickass frag ratios against your forces? Or should we give 'em all single-shot rifles, ten rounds of ammo, one day's training, and then order a few thousand recruits to wander aimlessly on the battlefield directly in front of your troops in the middle of the day, you know, to sorta even things out a bit?"
As Patton said - war's not about dying for your country, it's about making some other son of a bitch die for his.
That's not to say that war's somehow good -- it's not, as any soldier will also tell you. It simply means that by the time you are at war, you owe it to your troops (your troops, not the other guy's troops!) to give them the maximum advantage possible.
85 years ago, that advantage was biplanes and the first tanks.
60 years ago, that advantage was crypto, long-range antisubmarine bombers, long-range fighter escorts, and yes, the first nuclear weapons.
10 years ago, it was cruise missiles, GPS, night vision, and the F-117.
Today, it's cheap GPS-guided bombs dropped from B-52s, thermobaric bombs, earth-penetrating warheads, and snipers.
10 years from now, it may be be killer robots, theater-based missile defense systems and airborne lasers. Or stuff that's just a gleam in some weaponeer's mind.
That's the name of the game. Were I a soldier, I'd be thankful for every advantage my weaponeers could give me -- because if the shit hits the fan and I have to use those weapons, the enemy on the battlefield sure as hell ain't gonna cut me any slack.
What is it with the EMPs in movies lately? Everybody's got an EMP (Broken Arrow, Matrix, Ocean's 11, etc), and they all miss one crucial fact. An EMP induces a massive electrical current in any conductor. Sure, that'll fry any piece of electronic equipment...but it'll also fry the nervous system of any nearby life forms. So, that EMP in Ocean's 11 should have turned Brad Pitt and Georgy Clooney (and everybody else in Las Vegas) into a quivering slobbering mess on the floor. Same thing with using an EMP against the killer robots...it'll kill any humans around, too.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
2. Some of us actually pay attention to things beyond our own lives, and consider factors beyond "gee, is a family member risking his life" such as the economic and diplomatic ramifications, as well as whether or not a military action seems feasible. The US does /not/ invade places on a whim.
This is an important point. All this "robots will make war too clean" stuff is crazy. War is incredibly destructive. Not just in the number of people who die but in economic and political terms. There are some who believe that GWB is waiting for the American economy to bounce back before he fulfills his dream of knocking off Saddam. Right now, our economy probably couldn't take the strain of a difficult conflict (the Afghan conflict hasn't been too tough on us, you have to admit).
GMD
watch this
Its not that hard to harden something against EMP, if you think that EMP is a significant risk. You know how the Squidy hunter-killers in The Matrix were only susceptable to EMP, and the super advanced machines had no defense against it? Yeah, that wasn't real. Someone made it up.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
What defines ethics to an AI anyhow?
Either way, it's inevitable: if A.I. becomes smarter than us, we'll live or die as a species at it's sole discretion.
Does this keep you up at night?
Are you Bill Joy?
Lasers Controlled Games!
Why do so many allegedly smart people (nerds) cite fiction as basis for an opinion? You know thats not real, right? Yeah, I know about half the posters are making a joke, but I really worry about the tenuous grasp on reality that the other half has.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
War is useful for population control. If you have more people then can live the lifestyle they want on the land you have, then war is a good way to randomlly get rid of a few.
Note the the above needs to be vague. If everyone wants to live like I want to live (1000 acres of land all for me, with a private 300 acre lake, within 2 miles of a modern super market), that is very different from people living another life. (ex small apartment in a skyscrapper near plenty of theator and night life) Resource limits are different for each style. There is a big different between beaf and rice as a main staple of the diet, though you can be healthy with either. When there isn't room for you to live your lifestyle you have to get rid of some people, or change your life style.
Something she might want to ponder -- the role of land mines (antitank and antipersonnel) -- in making sure that the war doesn't start up again. There's considerable discussion of it in yesterday's Slashdot article on a laser-based mine removal system. (Basically, a big honkin' laser on a Humvee, intended for clearing small areas of mines under battlefield conditions.)
Briefly - the US isn't a major user of land mines, and the DMZ is one of two areas in the world where the US still needs 'em. NK forces could easily overrun SK forces, were it not for the minefields in the DMZ.
Risk to civilian life from these minefields is nil - because nobody lives in the DMZ. Their presence keeps the truce, even when NK is in rather dire political/economic straits, and SK becomes a tempting target.
> In the game of war, alot of bad stuff is going to go down, but I guess you just have to hope it's the other guy that gets the worst of it.
Yup. And if I'm gonna quote Patton, I should also quote Gen. Douglas MacArthur:
"A soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must bear the deepest wounds and scars of war."
... is that the USN is the branch of the military researching autonomous aircraft, not the USAF. Sheesh, not only are they behind in fighters but they'll also be behind in UAVs!
:)
Of course, considering the USAF to be a brach of the military is really stretching it...
mesa hate osama. send in the clones.
MARIJUANA, SHROOMS, X: ONLINE?! - E
I sure hope we can institute one of these, I've been waiting long enough to get to be a war hero.
Seriously though, when all wars are automated, what then is the point of warfare? Won't this just compell the technologically weaker side to strike at "civilians" by becoming "terrorists", since forcing one's will by loss of human life has always been the method of war?
If nobody's physically involved in the fighting, who is a civilian and who is a warrior? It strikes me that the difference is that a warrior has voluntarily put his life at risk to fight, whereas a civilian has not. In this future scenario, all people are civilians, but they're also all being put at risk, all the time. Is this where the future truly leads?
(this is just a repost of the parent with my bonus enabled (yes, I posted the parent, metamods))
Although this is a stretch, I'll get in on this one, because the humanistic issues are astounding. War involves death and destruction, but honestly, it also involves some morals, even to win.
Honestly, the object of war is defeating one's enemies, not destroying them utterly. Creating a machine that might not have sympathy for non-combattants, personal property, innocent victims, or even animals scurrying away seems like a terrible idea. And an utter waste.
Without the concept of losses on your side, you see total coquest as the only way. Total conquest can mean total death. Here is a short version of my argument:
Mechanical weapons have pinned down an group, and that group decides to surrender. The person or entity on the other side of that machine feels no threat to his life, so like an execution, they might just "pull the switch" on them. WHY? It is a colder decision... or that decision is automated for "no quarter" fighting.
Either way, you are not going to feel the sympathy required to cut a break surrendering in battle if you are removed from it. You might let a group surrender if you are getting bullets over the top of your head too, but I find that less likely that you would let them surrender if you were making a decision in a air-conditioned military building in a suburb.
However, if you made them impenetrable pacifying machines instead a weapons platform, then that is an idea. Robots might be used for capture, but using them to kill sounds dreadful.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Robots will augment, but never replace humans in warfare, in the same way that the automatic rifle has superceded the knife, but not rendered it obsolete.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Might I suggest a design like this (AV's on left and right, Doctor and companion in middle).
[Insert pithy quote here]
Close, but no cigar.
Both were nods to the original soldiers in the American Revolution - younger, single men who'd taken an oath to respond to a call to arms within one minute. They were the elite of the militia at the time.
They were involved in this little scuffle, about which your history teachers (if you're an American) may have told you. It was the "shot heard 'round the world".
There is a top level project called "Intelligent Autonomous Agent Systems" of which this is part of. But there's nothing coming out of that which resembles T2 style aggresive AI controlled vehicles. Most of what they mean by autonomous, is the ability for the system to reconfigure itself if it loses an 'agent'. IE, and information node point. Another UAV could move from Group-A to Group-B to cover a lost eye-in-the-sky.
Although, I think there is room for truly autonmous agressive UAV. During desert storm, much of the day-day airborne offense took place in kill-boxes. They basically put a grid over the desert, and certain pilots or squadrons were told to destroy anything moving in grid X:Y. These boxes we're very much outside the 'Fire Support Coordination Line' meaning these air mission didn't need to be coordinated by someone on the ground. They were truly deep in enemy territory. When you run missions near troops the FSCL becomes the important factor. You can't target or shoot anything behind it (your computer won't let you either) Also, anything behind the FSCL requires a on-the-ground coordinator to give you the go ahead. I think we could see in 10 years roving aggresive UAVs that patrol grids and kill anything it finds in them. It's no different than what our pilots do now.
In fact, our humans pilots make mistake more than machines. There's famous video tape of an Apache captain taking out a Bradley and an M-113 at night, all capatured on his FLIR. He was providing FSCL support. His computer would not give him the green light to fire, he in fact had to override it in order to attack. His ground command did clear him for the shot verbally, telling them they had no vehicles in that area. There could be an argument that a mistake like that would not happen if it was a machine making the decision. I believe the real cause of that incident was the moving of the FSCL, and the airborne guys not getting the most recent FSCL coordinates (although his computer did have it).
-malakai
-Malakai
A Dragon Lives in my Garage
Yes, [Ender].... this game is going to start being really difficult.
Sounds like Ender's Game in a sense....except Ender was tricked into playing that really cool video game.
That's not the way I remember it. What happens is the janitor rediscovers arithmetic and the wonder of wonders - he can do sums in his head FASTER then they can generate them using a calculator (this story was written a goodly number of years ago.) The generals are estatic - instead of using an onboard computer to compute the trajectory of their ballistic missiles, they'll stick human suicide volunteers onto them. Now, all we have to do is to talk to the janitor guy and have him reveal the secret to doing math in one's head and we'll be all set to kick the Soviets hineys.
The janitor, horrified that his hobby will be used to kill human beings, commits suicide (feeding himself to a molecular disassembeler garbage disposal or somesuch.)
An effective countermeasure is to build a concrete building with the usual steel reinforcing mesh, but make sure that all the mesh sections are welded together and grounded. The risetimes are a few nanoseconds, and thus the energy is mostly below 1GHz.
We can't even build a computer that can have intelligent human conversation (by intelligent conversation I mean something that doesn't cop out of questions and answer questions with questions). I think that any possibility of T2 is still a long ways away.
It may not affect a human that much from a safe distance away, but what about at ground zero? Of course, from an actual nuclear blast, you'd get fried, but in the movies (Matrix, Ocean's 11) they had a device that could make the EMP without the nuke blast. Wouldn't it still fry somebody standing right next to it?
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
See the 1997 Congressional hearings on EMP protection.
Asimov already did that - check out "Robots and Empire". R Daneel integrates a "Zeroth Law" of "A robot shall not harm humanity, or through inaction cause humanity to come to harm". But all the rest of the Robot series have a straightforward logic approach to this - count the number of humans harmed either way, and save the greater number. Several Asimov Robot stories cover attempts to make robots "classify" humans, and always show the attempt failing.
Grab.
Too true. I'm a Brit - I happened to be over in the States a couple of months back and saw Battlebots. And my only reaction was "well, put all the Battlebots in an arena, and the weakest Robot Wars entry will steamroller the lot in 5 minutes, no messing". They're just so badly made, not designed for any sort of "battle".
And where's the fun in assault courses? I mean, the US is the country that invented WWF, and they can't even see that a robot assault course is boring, boring, boring?! Compare and contrast to "Robot Wars" - cutting disks, hydraulic pick-axes, flipper mechanisms that'll throw a 60kg robot a metre in the air, even the most basic has a self-righting mechanism these days. Why does anyone bother to watch Battlebots? Or possibly, why does no-one at Battlebots watch Robot Wars to see how it *should* be done?
Grab.