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U.S. Army Robots Break Asimov's First Law
buanzo writes "The US Army is deploying armed robots in Iraq that are capable of breaking Asmov's first law that they should not harm a human.
SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection Systems) robots are equipped with either the M249, machine gun which fires 5.56-millimeter rounds at 750 rounds per minute or the M240, which fires 7.62-millimeter rounds at up to 1,000 per minute.
" update this story refers to this article from 2005. But com'on, robots with machine guns! I don't get to think about that most days!
From TFA:
They are still connected by radio to a human operator who verifies that a suitable target is within sight and orders it to fire.
While they are harming a human, it's ultimately a human that makes the decision to fire. And who cares about fictional "laws", anyway?
...who fears government having sole access to technology that its own citizens would be jailed for?
Yes, I am likely the biggest anti-State promoter on slashdot, so many will take my opinion with a grain of salt. Yet this is one of those cases where history shows that we the People need to be cautious in giving government weapons that we ourselves can not own or use. Tyrant dictators for thousands of years have used the new weapon of the day to keep not just their enemies under their thumbs, but also their own ruled citizens. From the bow to the gun to the airplane to the nuke, those that govern have always had an edge. Sure, most of us wouldn't trust some big corporate CEO in owning a robot that kills, but what protects us from a coup or a tyrant who finally has the ultimate way to control the citizens?
No tinfoil hat today, just an honest opinion (and fear) that these weapons will make us more hated in the rest of the world, as well as offering future dictators a tool to subjugate the citizens. Rather than helping spread democracy, I fear we'll see how slippery that slope gets when very powerful individuals are given even more power.
I'd rather return to the "No Standing Army" policy of individual state militias that can be called up to defend our borders in the event of a real declared war. We'd have more money to spend on our families and our communities (of people we generally agree with) rather than providing the future authoritarians a tool of continuing control over our descendents. All the tyrants we've fought in the past have been mere mosquito bites at the village pool compared to the shark attack we face today in our own backyard waters.
... You have thirty seconds to comply..."
of course they do they're supposed to aren't they i mean common they're army robots and what are army robots supposed to do apart from kill things goddamn it they aren't the huggy fluffy type of robots theyre killer robots that kill things
I guess it depends what you consider to be a robot? And under what conditions it could kill another human? The Phalanx defense system, currentlly employed on U.S. Warships, would allow itself to shoot down an enemy aircraft if it were attempting to crash into the ship. The Phalanx uses radar to detect incoming missiles and shoot them out of the sky by unleashing an insane amount of bullets in direction of the target. Pictures and info here. -C
Theres lots of robots designed for this purpose.
:D
Of course, they are just toys and the big deal is this will be rolled out, but heres a couple of things I thought of:
USB Air Darts
Controllable from the computer
Automatic sentry gun
Uses a built in camera to detect and aim at moving targets.
Its all very half life ish, but plenty of fun.
liqbase
These are actually robots, but they're not the fully-autonomous solutions that Asimov was suggesting that mankind needed protection from. Thus the "laws" of robotics don't apply here, because it's still a human who's doing the thinking for the machine.
In effect, this is a safe way for ground troops to line up a kill zone, then cause lots 'o bad guys to get torn to shreds. Prior to this, troops needed to use a vehicle-mounted machine gun to get this sort of rate of fire. This was extremely limited in close quarters, where a Humvee or Tank might not fit. While it was theoretically possible to carry a machine gun to the combat zone, such weapons are difficult to transport, setup, and use in close quarters.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
...is no "law" at all.
If the submitter wants to troll about the military, the least he could do is spell Asimov's name correctly.
What makes a "robot"? Progressively more complex machinery has been able to inflict bodily harm, and kill, for quite some time.
A Roomba will not scare the piss out of a cat.
Well, why should robots obey the laws when their commander doesn't?
THE US Army is deploying armed robots in Iraq that are capable of breaking Asmov's first law that they should not harm a human.
Sorry to break it to the folks over at the Inquirer, but Asimov's Laws do not actually exist....any more than his 'positronic brain' does. It's fiction.
Next week on the Inquirer: Computers Built That Break The Orange Catholic Bible's Commandment of 'Thou shalt not make a machine in the likenes of a human mind'.
Sheesh.
They are still connected by radio to a human operator who verifies that a suitable target is within sight and orders it to fire.
OK....so the're not even robots, then. They're telepresence devices.
Then the robot has the job of making sure lots of bullets are sent towards the target.
Statement from the Iraqi forces regarding the use of these 'robots':
Nice to know we can take what we've learned in FPSs and apply them to the real world.
Later the US plans to replace the control system of the bots with a "Gameboy" type of controller hooked up to virtual reality goggles.
Yes! Finally, all my training has paid off! I can be a soldier from the comfort of my basement! Where do I sign?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
These robots will have a pre-set kill limit.
The enemy must merely send wave after wave of men until that limit is reached and they will shut down.
(assuming you ignore all that "except where such orders would conflict with the First Law" stuff)
This is not an autonomous robot, but a radio controlled robot. We've been using laser guided bombs since the 1970s and other robots for this purpose for years. Until they are using automatons (autonomous robots not controlled by a human operator) it is not breaking Azimovs law.
Zeroth Law:
A robot must obey any order given to it by the commander-in-chief or his appointee.
First Law:
A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm, unless it conflicts with the Zeroth Law.
Second Law:
A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the previous laws.
Third Law:
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the previous laws.
As the robot is not intelligent enough - or isn't considered as such - to make the decision of opening fire I personally don't think this breaks Asimov's law. This robots are more like 'extensions' to a soldier's body, IMHO.
I guess that if we are to consider this a violation of Asimov's laws the computers of guided missiles have been ilegally killing people for a long time.
Disclosure: I'm stupid
The story says point blank that these are controlled by a human. That makes them no different than the missile-equipped predator aircraft (which have been used in Iraq for years now)
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
EOM
Do they run Linux?
Beings aspergers AND pulling chicks... I enjoy the challenge!
how is this breaking the 1st law or whatever if they haven't been programmed with the law? it's not like the 'law' in this sense is the same 'law' used in science
if i'm not immortal, what's the point of living?
...te?
... a first generation BOLO.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
Will we soon be talking about our "brave robotic slaves fighting terrorism overseas"? Eisenhower was right, the military-industrial complex is out of control.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Oh no! Robots are breaking fictitious laws!!! Someone call the Fiction Police!
This guy's the limit!
This is great, now we can sit back, watch the News and see the Robots destroying each other in real time!
'Honey, pass me a beer, the robot wars are on.'
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
. . . a place where Asimov's Laws, like the US Constitution or the Geneva conventions, don't really apply.
...this wil lead to the enemy developing technology to detect these devices, allowing them to Find Waldo.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Or is Slashdot more stuck on Hollywood myths than anyone, convinced that robots must have anthropomorphic traits, flashing non-functional lights, and a canned monotone voice...
I suggest you read Slashdot
Has Gov.Arnie been involved in this decision - sounds like a likely plot for Terminator 4....
#include <sig.h>
Now they just need to find some video game ace and tell him they want him to test out the "latest virtual reality video game". Even better if he's young and named "Ender"
The very idea of a rule against hurting humans implies that a robot knows:
1. What hurting means
is it pain? death? financial impact? what about indirect effects? If I help human 1 build a better mousetrap, I am indirectly harming some other human's way of life.
2. What people are
3. Where they are
These are highly non trivial problems. In fact, they're unsolvable to any degree of certainty. They only make sense in a *science fiction* book in which a highly talented author is telling you a story. In the real world, they are meaningless because of their computational intractibility.
In the real world, we use codes of ethics and/or morality. Such codes recognize the fact that there are no absolutes and sometimes making a decision that will ultimately cause harm to someone is inevitable.
So can we please stop with these damned laws already?
Hearing the name/term "Waldo" reminds me of this classic.
And you're absolutely right in your categorization of the device mentioned in the article.
>> "What would the robut do? Frame someone!"
I haven't read any Asimov (he's on my list though) but my first thought to this was: Asimov is fiction and these aren't autonomous robots. These robots are radio controlled by humans, so all this does is put the soldier out of the line of fire and put a machine in his place.
So, why is Asimov being invoked on a non-autonomous robot and the military being frowned upon for breaking Asimov's first law...when the machines wouldn't have the foggiest of clues to what Asimov's laws mean?
Really, these robots are people killing people with a camera & some servos as a proxy. There is nothing sentient about this robot (from what I read).
:wq
So what this really shows us is that the winner of future wars will be determined by the country who has the most skilled gamers. I think I like the direction things are headed. Let's be sure to stay friends with the Japanese tho.
...who fears government having sole access to technology that its own citizens would be jailed for?
The autonamous technology is already out there. Look at the DARPA Grand Challenge. And, it's not just big corporations but universities and small organizations. If you are talking about the guns. Well, you may not trust the government with those big guns with the checks and balances. But, who would trust you and others with those guns but without those checks and balances?
So, you talk about future dictators having more tools of torture. Do you think they are not doing great with the tools they have now?
I'd rather return to the "No Standing Army" policy of individual state militias that can be called up to defend our borders in the event of a real declared war.
I kind of like this idea but it is not practical in this world. The US is a big target for many reasons. The top guy always is. Can a militia get up to arms quickly enough? Can they militia men have the training that regular army can have? No to both. It would put us in a loosing situation against our enemies. This is no longer practical.
Evolution or ID?
The Romans proved this, when the city state armies (farmers and the like) were out farming, the Roman army was constantly training. Thus Romes enemies fell quickly.
I don't see how this is any different than the flying attack drones the military uses now, although with a much more advanced threat and target acquisition system. If anything, this system will help eliminate human error by allowing suggested parsing of people by estimated threat level.
If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.-TJ
Does anyone remember the movie Screamers (and the Philip K Dick book Second Variety, on which it was based) In the movie the robots that we trying to wipe out humanity were called SWORDs. Maybe Bush really wants to wipe out all those annoying voters who are messing up his approval ratings....
Post apocalyptic gaming goodness
The Mudjaihidin are gonna pee their pants laughing at this.
Either it's battery will run dry in the middle of an operation.
Or simple fallpits filled with water will become real fun again.
Or some mix of old chains, barbed wire and metal scrap will be used to stop it dead in it's tracks. Literally.
Or some simple contraption containing sprayable graphite powder and chaff will show how fast a device like this can go haywire.
And, btw., this is not a robot but a remote controlled vehicle with a rc gun welded to it.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
If you RTFA, then actually read the story that the Inquirer non-news item links to, you'll see that this was announced in February 2005.
Not to minimize the other aspects of the non-news story, but this is pretty ancient news.
The M-249 is a belt or cartridge fed light machine gun, also known as the SAW (Squad Automatic Weapon). It fires the same rounds as the M-16, just a bit faster. It's heavier, but very much man-portable, and is a personal weapon. The M-240 is the 7.62mm replacement for the old M-60 of the Vietnam era. It is freaking heavy, and considered a crew-served weapon, but doesn't require a vehicle to move. You CAN mount either weapon on a Humvee turret, but it's hardly required. Again, SAWs are usually considered personal weapons.
So what's so new about these news? There have been automatic defense system which fire as soon as something comes in sight. Is this not a robot? Just because it doesn't look like the classic sci-fi robot does it make no less a robot.
Windows is like decaf - it tastes like the real thing, but it won't get you through the day.
You have to convince all 200+ countries to demilitarize. Simultaneously. You won't be able to.
... because the problem with that is "individual state militias" can't afford ICBM's, helicopters, attack aircraft, missiles, etc. We now have a defenseless America, and the rest of the world is up to speed. The state of war has been beyond the militia for over 150 years now. You have to prepare for the war 20 years from now, not the war at hand.
End of story.
I'd rather return to the "No Standing Army" policy of individual state militias that can be called up to defend our borders in the event of a real declared war.
The beauty of modern warfare is very few people die relative to former wars. We've only lost around 2,000 men and women in Iraq so far and although it is a trajedy (not the war, but the loss) it is far less than wars of the same scale in years prior. Technology makes the difference.
Yes, but that's interesting enough in its own right. RAH and Haldeman gave us the image of the future soldier in his heavily computerized powered armor, but the soldier was still human. Later Haldeman (Forever Peace), changed that to a remote-controlled humanoid form. It's interesting to see that this might be the future; the humans (war-fighters in current parlance) will be isolated from the combat, and we'll fight via Waldos, whether these robo-cars or predators, or sharks with transmitters in their heads.
It's an interesting progression. We won't give up on war, but we will go to great lengths to make ourselves less personally involved. It will be interesting to see what happens when AIs improve, and the devices do become more autonomous. "I'm sorry Dave, but he really does need to be shot."
the more accurate the calculations became, the more the concepts tended to vanish into thin air. R. S. Mulliken
Do they look like upside down trashcans and shout "Exterminate!"?
[Insert pithy quote here]
I would argue that Cruise Missiles (US Navy's Tomahawk and USAF's ALCM and GLCM) are more robotic than this remote controlled toy...
Hey, almost any "fire and forget" missle qualifies for this distinction...
Goofy, Geeky Gifts and More!
The US gov. and mil. break so many written laws, you really think they care about unwritten ones?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
articles of the Geneva Convention
You do realize that the Geneva Convention is a treaty that only applies to the treatment of soldiers of signatories to the treaty, don't you?
international law concerning invading sovereign nations
Technically, Iraq was still at war with the rest of the coalition that threw them out of Kuwait. Saddam had certain conditions he was bound to fulfill under the terms of a cease-filre (not a peace treaty), which he did not fulfill.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
But Asimov's robots rules were made for intelligent robots, something that USA and every other country is far away from achieving right now
So, that robot doesn't break any relevant rule, its an unintelligent robot that can shot people, big deal, there are a few people that shot people in a lot of places, my only worry is that drug traffic will start eployin those
I'm positive, don't belive me look at my karma
If something goes wrong, they will deploy the Will Smith to take out the robot.
Hey, nimrod, the average American Marine is a young adult who cares about his or her country enough to put themselves on the line defending it and its principles. What the fuck have you done in your sorry life that allows you to pass this kind of sanctimonious judgement on them?
Sorry lowlife but it's no secret that people like you are a "tad" worthless. And for those who rated the comment as insightful, you're just as bad.
Rob Miles
I realize this is "news for nerds", but to get upset about a literary allusion is a little over the top even for this crowd. I think we all realize that Asimov's "Laws of Robotics" are not actually laws, thank you. If anybody didn't realize it, your brilliant and biting responses have certainly clarified the point. The issue of whether it is or isn't a robot is also kind of silly - robotic welders are called robots, and they aren't autonomous by any definition. Thus, to summarize: 1. Asimov's laws are not encoded into US legal statutes, laws of nature, or in the Bible (that I've seen) 2. Robots do not have to be autonomous or possess free will or sense of self I hope that helps. Go back to pining for your XP on IntelMac...
"Asimov's Laws of Robotics" are a _plot device_ that Asimov invented for one reason: to be able to write entertaining stories based on showing the myriad ways in which they don't work. They're far too superficial and simplistic, by design.
So not only are they fictitious, they were invented in order to be wrong...
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
I don't recall any of Asimovs books ever said all robots had to be made with the three laws, only that they were. As such, there's nothing to be "broken". Asimov's laws mostly dealt with the difficulty of creating such a system at all, that wouldn't be twisted by cold machine logic.
Particularly the "through inaction, allow no human to come to harm" is problematic, even though the law obviously needs it. That may mean taking over for mankind, and what it means to a robot who can sense emotions. Other things include the definition of "human". If you let Hitler program the robots, the three laws might not help. Also the balance between very weak impulses from one law against strong impulses of another law. Otherwise, they'd never get past the tiniest details of the first law. not taking commands at all.
The question wasn't in as much if we can make a robot that would be a threat to humans, but rather if we could build one that wasn't. In either case, it doesn't seem we're even remotely close to working AI of that level.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
sorry but I hate how the name "robot" is thrown around to almost anything. I was in robotics competitions in college and what these things are and what the general public is told a robot is are simply remote control cars with weapons.
Call me when the thing can be deployed with an objective and will on it's own finish that objective without human interaction or control. THEN I will call it a robot. until then it's a glorified remote control car.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
that wants one of these for the next neighborhood water fight? Ok, maybe I am...
I come here for the love
This is just a stepping stone, to get a foothold on the technology and beta test ideas in the field... which was basically all the IRAQ war was really about. Everything else about it was a lie and a smokescreen by the military machine. The real agenda was to test smart weapons, large weapons systems, new tanks, new technology, new communications methods, robot surveilance machines, everything in the field... first via human control, and then ultimatly by wireless telemetry control from a command and control center.
Star Wars Episode 2 laid it all out for us... a vast army of specialised clone machines of vast and varied destructive capabilities able to be controled and deployed remotely, who do not tire, who do not fear, who do not have any moral qualms or conscience about killing anything or reservations about anything they are doing whatsoever.
When you can setup factories that mass produce soldiers who only require fuel and direction, the world is yours to own. Then no human interference stands in your way to mass deployment. It comes down to cranking up your factories full gear to produce death dealing machines which the the US already has plenty of experience in since WW2.
Eventually, you build the robots which build the robots, so you eliminate the human conscience all together to think twice about what its doing. And you run it full throttle.
Every human reading this needs to be doing everything possible to fight the US government now with everything they have before its too late, and there will not be any stopping its greed and power. We know the lies, we see them plainly, and yet sit complacently behind computer monitors downloading the latest copy of media playing software while the American government expands its power and commits appauling attrocities around the world out of site.
The same thing happened in Nazi germany as the citizens just kind of listened to their radio and went along with the flow... decades latter they still feel guilty that they did not stand up and act to stop and put an end to the madness when they still had a chance to.
This reminds me of the story, whereby during WW2 the Russians trained dogs to lie under tanks, with the intention of strapping them with explosives on the battlefield to destroy enemy tanks. However, once on the battlefield and the dogs were unleashed (hehe) they ran under the Soviet tanks instead.
Bender: *snore* "Kill all humans...Kill all humans...Must kill all hu..."
Fry: "Bender, wake up!"
Bender: "I was having the most wonderful dream! I think you were in it."
wasnt he originally designed to be a military robot with a laser weapon system. Just wait till one of these things goes nutty and wanders off and joins up with Steve Guttenberg. THe HORROR, oh please wont anyone think of the children.
Ok crack break is done, back to work.
30% Troll, 50% Underrated, 10% Interesting
Score:5, Troll
The U.S. military has been using UAVs (Unmanned Aerial Vehicles) for a while, and has used them to launch missile attacks in several cases, which you have probably heard about on the news. You could argue that the UAVs are nearly robots, since they do quite a bit of flying and observing autonomously. But they do not attack autonomously.
This wikipedia article describes one such UAV, the Predator, and details the attack missions it has been used for.
"I don't know half of you half as well as I should like, and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve."
In my mind, a robot operates on it's own. It is a mechanical device that can be programmed to perform specific function in advance and then operates independantly.
A lot of what are called robots are just fancy remote controled cars. In this case, a fancy remote controled car with guns. Fun, but not a robot.
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
OK. I'm going to go hide now.
HAL2000 don't surf!
I dunno, if I were sending my robots after this Asimov guy (is that a Russian name or what?) I'd probably equip them with Metal Storm
You never have too much firepower. Those russkies may be ignorant peons, but they can take a hell of a whippin'. The Nazis beat the shit out of 'em, but they kept comin'. Seems to me that a coonventional armament like a Phalanx may seem cheap, but it might not do the job.
Hell, even when I'm out huntin' 'coon'n'bear, I'd want a better system than a Phalanx. Seems to me, if you're serious about the security of our great ountry, you'll give the boys at Metal Storm a call. Robots don't like get overrun by hordes of reds, any more than humans do.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Mod entire article down as total flamebait. The headline belongs on the likes of Fark.com, not here.
Seriously, it's huge news that the US Army makes and uses stuff designed to break things? Other shockers; water is wet! snow is cold! sky is blue!
Furthermore, any simple minded cretin should know that the fictional robots that supposedly have the three laws are far more advanced than anything we have now. (Arguments could be made that the ones in the story are actually self-aware.) Expecting current to obey the three laws is the height of foolishness, and isn't even funny in the slightest if that was the intent.
Until these things are asking for leave for R&R in Tokyo after a long tour they can be expected to act just like any other tool.
Mind telling us what those terms where? Did they involve WMDs or Al Qaeda connections?
They can't strafe :P how do they possibly play.
Which they didn't. And why not? Because the UN member states said "Where's the evidence Saddam has/is developing WMDs in breach of the ceasefire".
And the US said : "Oh, we know he has WMDs, we're going to invade anyway."
Turns out the UN member states were right, and the US was lying. Hence, illegal invasion.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
I love slashdot. Uncomfortable facts immediately become "Troll".
Seriously, if youe biggest worry about Bush's Iraqi quagmire is related you Isaac Asimov, you're a complete idiot.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Ok, in the idea of guns to plows, what if this type of system was put to use fighting invasive species.
I know it sounds strange, but what if some developers get together, develop image analysis tools that could identify the CANE TOAD that is ravaging Australia. The robot, finds them, shoots them with a gun, dart gun, or blinds them with a laser, and then waits for the next Toad to roast.
And even though I like them, Austalian rabbits, foxes, and other destructive invasive species could be wipped out.
Now, all I need to do is to make sure there is a backdoor and reprogram them to kill all humans and my world domination will be complete.
can't it just be heavily armoured, and set to stun or incapacitate rather than kill?
Mind telling us what those terms where?
You can look them up. His biggest violation was preventing the weapons inspectors from going anywhere, anytime. Basically, he was required to destroy the WMDs, and provide proof of having done so. Too bad for him he decided to bluff.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
I agree. I'm much more worried about the laws whch should be fiction that become non-fiction.
Those who believe the Internet is private,
find their privates are on the Internet.
a toy robot!!
(leaps through window)
BilldaCat
What happens when the Iraqi army or some script kiddie haxors the robot and then control goes out of the 'responsible' hands of the US military and into the hands of the enemy?
making a robot to kill human beings when we can't even make a decent voting machine? I guess that bringing to force something that will probably trigger another Geneva convention trumps implementing free and fair democratic elections.
Many researchers are spending lots of time researching AI, and the problems for which the Laws of Robotics are a an attempted solution; Namely how do you keep the robotis from taking over and/or indiscriminately killing mere humans, as seen in so many hollywood movies. So fictional laws are important as experiments in looking at potential solutions to a real problem.
As I see it, the main problem consists of two factors. One factor develops as a result of the first.
The first factor is consciousness, also known as self awareness. The second factor sounds like it is the first, but it includes other areas.
The second factor is Identity. Identity is not restricted to Self Awareness, but also includes group awareness, etc in expanding circles to include universes, subjective and otherwise. When someone else is considered part of a group identity, as "one of us", then you tend not to act against yourself. When the other person is seen as being "one of the Not Us but Them" then you tend to get an opposition, etc.
In wars, it is more a universe thing, the Hitler Universe vs the Churchill Universe, for example. Or Religious Figure One (tm) vs Religious Figure Two (tm). Or a religious universe vs a scientific universe.
Part of the problem of psychopaths, sociopaths, etc. is that they tend to group their victims into the "One of the Not Us/Not Me" category. No sense of being or identity is allowed or granted to the other person, and so, to one degree or another, this rationalizes pigeon-holing people into things that can be abused one way or another. Or else the identity given is some other alteration of reality that legitimizes criminal activity.
This is difficult enough to deal with in humans. Psychologists and psychiatrists have no cure for psychopaths, since it is seen as being in the genes. You can't make a pill for it, and no psychopath would take it as they do not have the luxury of seeing that anything is wrong with themselves.
Now we try to apply this to Robotics. Probably the only real solution for the problem is to redefine Human as self aware creatures from earth, and incorporate this awareness somehow into robots, to some slight degree, so that Robots see Humans as "One of Us".
It is a little touchy on how you would do this. It exposes some of the potential hypocrisy of humans in actions towards other potentially self aware creatures on earth, as well as each other. A self aware robot could see the hypocrisy without the emotional justification people exhibit. At this point, we could be in trouble.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
I'd rather return to the "No Standing Army" policy of individual state militias that can be called up to defend our borders in the event of a real declared war.
I like to go back to American government circa 1790's as much as the next person, but Militias have no place in a world that Total War exists. By the time the nations borders are stormed, if there are no standing armies with caches Tanks, Jets, and ballistic missiles then there will not be enough time to counter the invasion.
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
Lesson from Battletech: Don't store machine gun ammunition in the head.
Don't ask.
Game: Player 'Donald J Trump' now has AI skill level 'experimental'.
I thought the laws of robotics that Asimov made applied to robots with artificial intelligence, not a human-controlled robot.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
...do they break the Zeroth law?
0. A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
This tagline is copyrighted material. Please send $10 for an affordable replacement.
Put the assembly on a "Torrent"?
I figure 3 shoots for a "Kill", not 1000's.
I figure a "Fire Squad" to queue up "Kills".
What happens if the bad guys "Capture" one?
Could the device support a low decible sound device? Some times you gotta "Flush" out your "Pray".
I think this is a "Proof of Concept", so some bugs are gonna make them selves known.
Maybe the R&D team might want to review the first scene of the movie, "Robo Cop"...
New meaning to the term Will Smith vehicle. This will make a fantastic sequel to I, Robot and will have just as much in common with Asimov as the first movie.
Activate!!
What do you think a soldier is these days?
For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother.
I love slashdot. Uncomfortable facts immediately become "Troll".
I do love slashdot. This the only place in the world that someone can go completely offtopic to rail on the Bush administration using incredibly slanted, oversimplified, and in several cases wrong conclusions and hyperbole to promote his political agenda.... and then get mad that he doesn't get accolades for his insight. Get a grip, troll.
Come on!!! If the Robots had broken say Newton's second law of motion, now that would be news, but Asimov's first law of robotics! These are not actual laws that nature follows, robot's couldn't care less about humans unless they are told so. And like some wrote these robots are not "autonomous", the call to attack and what attack is made by humans.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
What the Army is using is not a "robot" in the traditional sci-fi sense. The devices are not autonomous, and are under the control of a soldier who is the one making the decisions to pull or not pull the trigger. This is more of a "remote controlled gun platform" than a robot.
The distinction is hard to get non-geeks to make though, as all sorts of remote controlled devices are talked about as "robots." They misuse this term all the time when talking about devices to search dangerous locations for earthquake survivors, for instance. The devices are like remote controlled cars with a camera on the front (and are not wirelessly controlled--they drag a cable behind them for power and control) but they call them "robots" all the time in the news
Interested in a Flash-based MAME front end? Visit mame.danzbb.com
If you consider the predator UAV a robot, this law was broken a long time ago.
Which facts/conclusions are wrong?
I assume you don't think Iraqi dead actually count as you don't even consider them worthy of mention.
No, they count, and its depressing how many die. However it isn't an example of modern warfare (my point). They fight with crudeer weapons and cruder tactics and thats why the death toll is higher (my point).
... that reality is for those who can't face science fiction.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
How so, oh enlightened being?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to make real computers act like the ones in the movies.
Can I get one of these to use in one of the "Robot Combat" TV shows? I think I could kick some butt if I could!
Just make sure the audience knows how to duck and cover.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
If nobody ever signed up at all, there would be no WARS. Period.
That is an utterly untrue statement. Many nations still have a draft, in which case you are signed up at the barrel of a gun. Hell, I was surprised to learn from my Austrian ex-girlfriend that they still draft every male citizen in Austria of all places (granted, you can do also choose to work as a civil servant for a longer period of time if you want to get out of military service).
A lack of volunteers has never stopped anyone from starting a war.
This day and age a lack of volunteers in the US might present a substantial obstacle to starting a war due to the very strong stigma associated with a draft. In the end though, if say China invaded Taiwan and the US at the time decided it wanted to rumble, it would rumble, volunteers or not. If it couldn't find enough volunteers, it would simply start drafting people.
The genie has been out of the bottle for a good 150 years or so. Nation states have been given enough power to force their citizens to fight, regardless if they want to or not. A lack of voluntary cooperation isn't stopping anyone.
Well as long as the robots aren't controlled by an AI entity that's capable of making its own decisions I don't think I'm too worried... yet. Here's hoping there isn't some project where the military is building a Skynet of sorts... -Bahamude
imagine a Beowolf cluster of those...
the more they over-think the plumbing the easier it is to stop up the pipe
My roommate last year was Japanese. I kicked his ass in every videogame I have. Also, he's never played DDR even once! So much for those 1337 Japanese.
So commenting on military ethics in Iraq in a thread about military ethics in Iraq is "completely offtopic" now?So commenting on military ethics in Iraq in a thread about military ethics in Iraq is "completely offtopic" now?
The fact you cannot distinguish between strategic and geopolitical "ethics" of the Bush Adminisitration, and the tactical ethics of some captain in a desert somewhere with a new weapon at his disposal is exactly my point. You are uninformed and have an axe to grind. You are looking for any excuse you can find to justify injecting your flawed, hyperbolic, and trolling agenda into this disscussion. You got modded into the crapper because your opinions are unfounded, inflamatory, exaggerations, and stated as "fact".. when they are very obviously highly arguable, questionable, and in one case wrong.
In fact, many of us could overlook the fact that you are tacitly changing the subject to the thing you really care about (that you hate Bush)... if your opinion was anything more then a terrible attempt at a troll by stating highly controversial positions as facts and then baiting someone to argue with you. That's the very definition of trolling -- hence the correct mod into oblivion.
Typical /. reader: "Bring our boys home now! We're tired of seeing members of our all-volunteer armed forces getting killed, even though this war has resulted in by far the fewest U.S. casualties of any major war the U.S. has ever been involved in."
/. reader: "Waaaaaa, you're breaking Asimov's first law of robotics! My bitching was never really about concern for the welfare of American troops, but rather it was about my hatred of them because the very need for their existence flies in the face of my humanist utopia worldview."
U.S. Army: "We're constantly looking for ways to reduce troop casualties, and to further that goal we're deploying armed robots."
Typical
"fires 5.56-millimeter rounds at 750 rounds per minute or the M240, which fires 7.62-millimeter rounds at up to 1,000 per minute"
Those are cyclic rates, as in the fastest the hardware can theoretically move. Realistically, you'll never see those rates. If you are firing more then 5-7 round bursts for any period more then a few seconds you will start cooking rounds, and all sorts of bad things will happen. The M240 comes with 2 barrels for field use, so that in situations where you need to be firing 5-7 second bursts for extended periods of time, or extended sprays you can swap barrels. If you don't swap barrels often enough, you will start cooking off rounds. That's what happens when the heat from the barrel causes the charge in the round to ignite with out the firing pin hitting the primer. Once that starts happening the guy will fire uncontrolled until the ammo feed is interrupted (ie: a gunner grabs and twists the feed). If the gun is left to free fire and the ammo chain is long enough the barrel will get hot enough to soften, which can lead to the tip of the barrel sagging, rounds jamming in the barrel, and eventually the barrel will rupture. IOW, all sorts of beije.
Semi auto is your friend. One shot, one kill.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
That tactic has been used since the Boer war.
Now tell, which facts of mine are wrong?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
The first "law" is only broken if one considers the ENEMY COMBATANT to be human, and treated as such. There are those who would would say that ENEMY COMBATANTS at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and undisclosed prisons throughout Europe are considered to be somewhat less than human.
QED
I think that it should be running Windows. Then they could claim that they no longer have a Blue screen of death, but are now doing red screams of death.
First: two observations:
1) SWORD is remote controlled it is not autonomous like I always thought a true robot in the Asimovian sense had to be.
2) Since we are now including remotely operated vehicles in the definition of a true robot, SWORD is not that different from a Paveway bomb or a Hellfire missile except SWORD doesn't self destruct when it destroys the target.
This begs the question wasn't Asimov's first law broken decades ago, perhaps even by the V1 which was strictly speaking a remote operated vehicle?
Personally I won't begin to worry about Asimovs laws as long as Humans are on the other end. apons.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
The Harpoon missile is another robot that's been around a long time. You tell it approximately where the target is, say "go kill it" and launch. The missle flies to the appropriate area, turns on its radar, and begins searching. It selects the most likely target found in the area, and uses rather sophisticated anti-jamming technology and terminal maneuvers to defeat the target's countermeasures, flying into the the target and detonating. Fully autonomous the whole time. Tomahawk does something similar for land-based targets.
So military robots have been around a long time.
Sean
The .mil boys have been using computers and simulations to kill billions of people fictiously for years. I guess they don't read Asimov. Advanced AI is being used in military hardware (such as cruise missiles and smart bombs) to kill real people.
p.s. Sign up for the "For Carl" to "For Butthead" dedication today!
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Now tell, which facts of mine are wrong?
You've already proven yourself to be a troll. I don't feed trolls. You don't make idiotic inflamatory statements, repeatedly state them as fact, and then expect rational people to get into a reasoned debate with you. You want an all-out shitstorm flamefest where you get to pump your flawed ideaology. Sorry, I prefer rational people.
Using SWORDs backfired on the military in the movie Screamers (Based on Philip Dick's Second Variety. Must be a sci-fi fan with an interesting sense of humour in the military.
And who cares about fictional "laws", anyway?
Yeah, I always thought the most implausible thing about Asimov's premise was the idea we'd think that way at all. "Wow, that could be really dangerous, we'd better start right from the beginning thinking about how to control it" doesn't really describe our relationship with technology. More like "wow, that'd be the biggest goddam bomb ever! We gotta build us one them like yesterday!" Put a couple of big gas-operated automatic rifles on one of those "robotic pack mules," set it for full auto and maximum erratic hop and just start parachuting them them in. Finally we can retire human infantry completely.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I agree with your sentiment but you argue the case terribly.
I think you're referring to the UN INTERNATIONAL COVENANT ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL RIGHTS, Part III, article 9, section 1. Surely you're not making the legal case that a country at war has no right to detain combatatants. No lawyer would ever argue that.
Geneva Convention? Your example has to be Guantanamo and the Taliban never signed the convention. Again a difficult case to make. This has been, and will be resolved as a Fouth Amendment case under SCOTUS not the Geneva Convention.
International Law concerning invading sovereign nations? It would be great if there were a law that prohibits a country from going to war. Fact is, it doesn't exist.
Find another line of reasoning. Your arguments are mainly bogus.
Now that we have "robots" with machine guns, I eagerly await the arrival of sharks with frickin' lasers.
___ In the words of Gen. Douglas McArthur: "I'll be right back."
How easy would it be to block or intercept the control transmissions? I wonder if it is at least encrypted. It is probably powered by Microsoft with Access! Ala Diebold voting machines... Also, is it really war if you don't pay with some of your own blood?
Asimov's Laws do not actually exist....any more than his 'positronic brain' does
That's actually the reason why these Army robots violate the First Law of Robotics! Who allowed the Army to develop robots with mundane electronic ICs instead of the incredibly complex positronic brains that should have been used in the first place?
cpghost at Cordula's Web.
But it was not the US's role to unilaterally enforce that.
The original ceasefire was not the US's to enforce.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Pvt Steve and Jim, both 19. sat at their individual 'battlestations': a desk with a high-tech computer that is linked remotely to their warbots. These particular stations are littered with food wrappers and empty soda cans: a privledge of those soliders willing to go above and beyond the call of duty by pulling 12 hour shifts 7 days a week.
...
Steve: "Haha prick! That's 5 kills for me today and we've only been at this for an hour!"
Jim: "STFU, you just got lucky, you got 5 heat signatures through a wall, and opened fire! You can't even prove they were combatants!"
Steve: "Tougt shit buddy. You knew as well as I did that our particular grid sector is a total free-fire zone. All the civies were told to get out a long time ago. Everything here is a target."
Jim: "EAT THAT! *counting* That's at least 15 kills, eat it bitch! I just owned that bus-full of combatants, dig your sorry ass out of my score!"
Steve: "The day is young, I'm going for another 100 today!"
What a Brave New World, indeed. The perfect tool for cowards.
You do realize that the Geneva Convention is a treaty that only applies to the treatment of soldiers of signatories to the treaty, don't you?
Wrong.
The signatories of the treaty agree to follow the rules regarding the treatment of the prisoners they take, their actions during wartime, etc.
A country that signs the treaty has to treat the prisoners of war that it captures according to the rules specified in the treaty, regardless of where those prisoners come from. That's why it's so important that the prisoners of war...excuse me, "enemy combatants" aren't officially recognized as prisoners of war... otherwise we'd have to treat them according to the rules of the treaty the US signed.
Pretty please spare everyone the bullshit until you know what the hell you're talking about.
The libertarian solution to the failures of capitalism is to apply more capitalism til the failures are fixed.
...if the army made a robot with a machine gun that didn't break Asimov's First Law. Asimov... what a joke. If he was really smart his first law would have said "robots with guns shoot things."
Maybe I am wrong but it seems to me that a couple well aimed paintball could blind that puppy pretty easily...thy should put some wipers on the cameras.
Could chocolate be quiet and let me finish?
And answer came there none. How deeply ironic, that you accuse me of trolling, but refuse to identify anything I've said as untrue, and then resort to rhetoric and name-calling.
I'm not said that you're not replying anymore, but feel free to come back when you're prepared to debate with adults, by supporting your accusations with something other than a tantrum, you silly little boy.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
AG Gonzales declares Asimov's Laws "quaint."
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
After all, insurgents don't count as humans, otherwise the whole Gitmo thing would be a huge human rights violation. Problem solved. Obviously the software would not allow it to shoot an American.
Don't put off until tomorrow what you can leave until the day after.
It's fitting they went with the robots instead of the sharks with 'frickin laser beams' :)
The price is always right if someone else is paying.
In other news, Iraqi terrorists^b^b^b^b^b^b^b^b^b^b insurgents breaking the 6th commandment.
....sharks with friggin' lasers on their heads!
:o)
Seriously, however, this is NOT a violation of the 1st Law as the robots don't have the fire / no fire decision.
Using a human operator makes this telepresence, not autonomous killing machines gone wild. (Hey, you sexy tin can...show us your gun!)
I am my own gestalt.
It seems that the next generation of Marines will be geeks with glasses that have mastered the art of delivering virtual headshots, only in the near future the shooting will be real. Really it should take almost the same set of skills to be a good AA or Counter-Strike player and to effectively operate an advanced remote-controlled "Terminator" Has it occured to you that by playing the FPS o today we are actually being trained to fight the future 21st century wars ... ?
Guns don't kill people, robots kill people.
But can it run Linux?!
I read something in more detail in popular science I think, too early to find a link.
They're currently controlling armed planes remotely in Afghanistan IIRC. Seems like a gamer would be qualified and enjoy work like this.
Man, you really need that seminar!
Although it may be a bit far from the current implimentation, I too, am disturbed at the prospect of having mechanized soldiers do the messy (a.k.a. dirty) work of our Government. If/when such machines become more sophisticated and streamlined in production, the possibilities for misuse are open for consideration. I think of covert operations first here. Also, the idea of smaller conflicts/wars where the foreign media shows, literally, the american war machine doing things that only make the U.S. look worse (whether we were right or wrong in doing so) would not only make us look worse than we already do (hard to belive right now, but I'm sure it's possible) but remove the human account, horrific as it is to endure, experience and tell, from our side of the event. This makes such conflicts easier to swallow especially when portrayed by the media, which has a large focus on deaths and casualties in armed operations (rightly so, but incomplete).
I think this will all come to pass anyway, because the military and quasi military branches of government will support the idea for precisely the reasons I have issues with it: why have our soldiers die in the alleys of Iraq and Afghanistan when robots can do it for them? Why should soldiers die needlessly and their families suffer? Those are all arguments I can understand and agree with on a surface level, but they skim over the arguments that should be seen underneath: Why are we in (insert conflict name here) in the first place? Is continued armed intervention/occupation/peace-keeping in (insert conflict name here) needed? Is it still needed? Are the deaths on any side worth the cost.
Sometimes armed conflict needs to happen, but the use of robots to do this kind of work, especially on a massive and/or secret scale, makes it a lot easier to kill without (for many at least) feeling the need to ask questions.
And when people die, questions are and should be, the order of the day.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
The "laws" are only broken if one considers the ENEMY COMBATANT to be human, and treated as such. There are those who would would say that ENEMY COMBATANTS at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo Bay, and undisclosed prisons throughout Europe are considered to be somewhat less than human.
Asimov combined two fictional plots: robots and laws. As anyone who follows legal systems, whether modern US Supreme Court or the acient Talmud- laws have gaps and contradictions. Most of Asimov's stories were how even well-intentioned laws could seem to "break" in special situations.
Has AI gotten so good that a "robot" knows what a human is and what "hurting is?" I didn't think so... Looks like just another machine of doom... kinda like a tank or a predator.
Whilst these robots (more like RC cars with guns - best selling new gizmo for next Christmas!) take soldiers and marines out of harms way which is a very good thing this is balanced by making combat operations more like a video game - arguably not such a good thing.
The problem is it "could" dehumanize the person that the operator can see as the "target". If someone is charging you firing an AK47 then hey just shoot him but it isn't always black and white, especially if the enemy are insurgents not uniformed troops.
There are plenty of issues to consider but hopefully as long as the operators have sufficient and appropriate training, the weapon's targetting is correctly calibrated and the cameras provide a clear enough picture before a decision to fire is made then it is on balance a good thing.
It could even let soldiers make better decisions before firing as they wouldn't have the distraction of bullets flying past them.
It is still very early in deployment so I guess we just have to wait and see.
But of course what we all really want to know is how long before we get the sentry guns from Aliens!
If it's robots killing other robots, then I'm fine with it. Of course there are the environmental consequenses to consider, but that situation would turn war into a glorified game that bankrupts the loser rather than a game of killing.
However, if it's robots vs humans from countries too poor to afford their own mechs, then that's worse. It'll be too easy for a nation with the robots to push around poorer nations without risk of repercussions at home due to casualties.
"It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it." Robert E. Lee
-b.
I have the same problem with this as I have with flying predator drones, satelite weaponary and all the other "remote" warefare devices being rolled out. You cannot ensure you will keep control of them.
We are fond of saying that terrorists are lazy and cowardly warriors, and it is that dishonour which sets them apart from the brave and legitimised "soldier". These are the tools of the lazy and cowardly.
Ask yourself what one of these things would do let loose in downtown NYC? Or on the busy shopping streets of any city?
How many innocent people could a predator drone take out on a peaceful saturday afternoon at the ball game?
By making and deploying such things we are begging for our enemies to sieze control of them and turn them against us.
Don't argue that that's impossible, you're all educated computer programmers and know as well as I do that this can and eventualy it will happen.
>> DROP YOUR WEAPON # #
>> YOU HAVE 20 SECONDS TO COMPLY # #
>> YOU HAVE 10 SECONDS TO COMPLY # #
the rest you *know*
find `find / -name bin` -name laden -exec \{\}\; -print | xargs rm -f -r /Pakistan: Permission denied /Iran: Permission denied
find:
find:
Thursday Next has been called and is on her way!
Serving your airship needs since 1995.
That's it. We're boned.
... but does it run Lotus Notes?
Dont forget about Zero Law: "A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm."
Wait, we just solved the recruiting problem, build more robots and connect them to top fraggers in America's Army. Ever wonder why they give the game out for free? Recruits can be any age now and we don't care anymore as long as your kill count is high, I mean 'Monster kill' level. And don't worry as soon as they get board by that they will hook it up to Skynet.
What moron... No no. What asshat came up with that title? This has to be the most assinine, misleading, and trollish title I've seen yet. Where to start. Let's start with the Three Laws of Robotics. They come from works of fiction. Well, I could go on, but I think pointing out that the poster blurs the distinction between fiction and reality is sufficient.
If I were to blur that distinction, I'd have to say that brain parasites have taken control of slashdot.
Apple introduces iRobot
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
This already has been done before even w/o the virtual reality rig.
During WW2, The Germans tried the remote-controled tank bomb. The US also had a project called Little David which was a remote controlled weapons platform.
Check History Channel's Mail Call. It has some of the footage showing those in action.
Nothing to see, move along.
I guess it goes right to article two "...or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.", whereas enemy (targets) are by default devoid of 'human' property.
...
That way, everything fits just fine (*shudder*) and at the same time exposes core values of military (extreme partisan) thinking. Asimov was utopist, or falling to the alleged 'anti-'war advanced cold war propaganda in thinking there were or ever would be 'us, humans' . Oh, it IS such a sweet dream
I'd agree with you more if we could refine "insurgents" just a little more:
1 Iraqis trying to free their homeland
2 Foreigners trying to help Iraqis free their homeland
3 Sunni Iraqis who know that if the new government succeeds, they lose the privileges they had under Saddam.
4 Foreign Sunnis trying to help group 3.
5,6 Iraqis and foreigners who just want to try and kill Americans.
I can have respect for groups 1 and 2, but not the rest. I also realize that the line between Al Quaeda and groups 5 and 6 is pretty thin. I also lose respect for groups 1 and 2 if they're indiscriminate about innocent lives.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
When I was a kid, my father came home very upset from the automotive factory one day.
It seems a man had stepped over a security barrier on the production line and into the area of a robot that welds doors on cars.
The robot picked him up and proceeded to weld him to the car - killing him.
My dad had to shut everything down and pull the body out.
PS: Officially, he died at the hospital, because insurance payments are higher if you die on the assembly site, but there is no doctor there to declare you dead.
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/91.htm
Geneva Convention Article 4
A. Prisoners of war, in the sense of the present Convention, are persons belonging to one of the following categories, who have fallen into the power of the enemy:
1. Members of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict as well as members of militias or volunteer corps forming part of such armed forces.
2. Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory, even if this territory is occupied, provided that such militias or volunteer corps, including such organized resistance movements, fulfil the following conditions:
(a) That of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) That of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) That of carrying arms openly;
(d) That of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.
Hate to interrupt your uninformed rant, but persons who violate (b), (c), and (d) don't count as "prisoners of war". It's right there in the text of the geneva convention.
HTH
HAND
It's only a Robot if it's autonomous. Otherwise, it's a Remote Device. Asimov's laws remain unbroken. For now.
Cheers, Tim -- Tim Janke Part mad scientist, part lion tamer: sr. software engineer, global team leader, project mana
Half the "Robot" stories are set pieces with the robot apparently breaking the Three Laws and Susan Calvin (or whoever) figuring out that the Three Laws were intact... because the rbot didn't recognise the human, or the robot didn't know the human could be damaged that way, or the robot was actually protecting the human from a greater harm...
In the real world, well, expecting a robot to figure out what's safe or not without human intervention is silly. Which is why I'm still amazed that Microsoft insists on making the Microsoft HTML control do that very thing...
If the robots are remotly controlled by troops elsewhere, this might save some casualties of war. If the robots start thinking on their own, I think we might have the horrors of 'Terminator' brought to life.
=*^.^*=
Fortunately a Carnegie Mellon research scientist has written a handy guide named How to Survive a Robot Uprising. Might be a good reference.
Find coupons in Greeley
What's wrong with this article is that the laws can only apply to artificial intelligence, and highly aware artificial intelligence at that. Robots as we have these days don't even come close to having that so it doesn't much matter if they ignore Asimov's laws.
What's wrong with the comments are the people all dismissing the laws. Someday it's entirely possible we will have highly aware artificial intelligence, and these are the first strong steps towards developing the basic morals and ethics we want the AI to include. Just because he's a science fiction author doesn't mean his ideas are entirely invalid.
The US Army is deploying armed robots in Iraq that are capable of breaking Asmov's first law that they should not harm a human
Just to clarify... Asimov was a Science Fiction writer. His "laws of robotics" were guidelines he put into his stories as plot devices and his opinion of the future. No one's breaking any laws of nature or dividing by zero here...
``The best story about the Three Laws is one Asimov used to tell: he went to see 2001 and as HAL began to go psycho, Asimov says he got more and more agitated, finally jumping up and declaring to all around that: "HAL is breaking First Law!" to which his companion (sometimes supposed to be Carl Sagan, but it's surely apocryphal)replied: "So strike him with lightning Isaac."'' -- Some Guy on /..
I heard it was Clarke himself, not Sagan, but it's been so long since I read it first that I can't remember. "Any sufficiently old story is indistinguishable from an urban legend." -- Somebody's first law.
Old news. Granted, the 7.62mm SAW is a nice touch. These armed 'bots are remote controlled, like bomb-squad robots used by sherriff's departments all over the country. And yes, the bomb squad bots are armed: usually a single-shot 12-gauge.
These bots can be programmed to follow a sequence, and self-stabilize. And they FLY. Full-auto 12-guage.
I've seen pictures of South Korean automated sentry guns, armed w/ a 7.62 SAW, deplyed in Iraq. If I can find them, I'll post them. Supposedly, like the Phalanx, minimal user interaction is involved during "watch."
This fellow is a fine previous example of an exception to Azimov's first law.
an ill wind that blows no good
They had a little robot (RC) that carried MG, flamethrower!, smoke, you name it, and this was in the mid-60s. They had, maybe still do, all sorts of cool things that go boom! at Aberdeen.
...How'd I miss those, baby?
Now if Comedy Central was still showing Battlebots, I predict this would be next season's champion!
"22 astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your state that makes people want to flee the Earth?" Stephen Colbert
C'mon, don't act suprised. The poster probably thinks the first rule of fight club REALLY IS you do not talk about fight club. They used the same Asimov reference on Digg too. What about the Predator drones that shoot Hellfire missiles? Aren't those "flying robots". That's been going on since 02.
While this weapon has some "autonomous" capability, like tracking the target after the command to fire is issued, it is still no more a robot than any heat-seeking missile. In that sense any self-guided missile (SAMs or even cruise missiles) can be called "a robot that viloates the First Law". The First Law can only be applied to systems that autonomously make the critical decision "to harm ot not to harm". This system doesn't.
Indeed, it is this and other devices which Asimov employs in his fiction-based studies of human nature which make his books masterpieces in the hard-science fiction genre. He could have just as easily have written about ordinary men under regular law, during just about any era in history, but such stories wouldn't have likely had the same impact as what he ultimately wrote. His work is great social commentary and insight about the human condition wrapped in a gauze of fiction. Unfortunately, so many people seem to not realize this or choose to ignore it. So much for reading comprehension, I guess.
With that said, is it really any wonder why we would make automated war machines (especially ones which fail the "Three Laws of Robotics")? Throughout history, technology (amongst other things) has ultimately been spurred on more by violence than by any other force. Information technology and the machines which manifest themselves from it are no different (save for the other great driving force, sex, which also has proven to be a factor in the spread of information and the technology that controls it). Violence and sex - war and pornography - these are ultimately the two great driving forces of information technology in human society.
Where's my fembot, damn it?!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But com'on, robots with machine guns! I don't get to think about that most days!
On the contrary, i think abotu that EVERY day
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
from the linked article (not the inquirer crap) SWORD robots are more accurate than human soldiers; the gun is mounted on a stable platform and fired electronically, eliminating trigger recoil, anticipation problems and timing the breathing cycle when firing
:-)
I think breath control is less of an issue when firing 750rpm. Breathing after suffering the recoil.. now that's another matter
I work at the company that makes these although I'm not in that group. I've heard that when they were first developed the army was afraid that the controls were too complicated for the soldiers. However, because many soldiers were raised playing Nintendo controlling the robots was second nature to them. You can read more about them here, and here is their data sheet.
C'mon, don't act suprised.
I'm not suprised by the stupid post, but I am suprised by the depth of it's stupidity. It's a new low. As a co-worker once said at a previous employer which is applicable to slashdot now: "There is no bottom to this place." I always thought that a Roland Piquepaille post was the lowest you could get. How wrong I was. Now that he's gone on to greener ZDNet pastures, all the stops are gone.
"You'll get nothing, and you'll like it!"
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in't! - Shakespeare, The Tempest
I'm guessing that the reason we still use human operators is because nobody's come up with a solution to the "AK-toting cow" problem.
It works like this: The US Gubbmint is all overjoyed 'cause robot soldiers will do all kinds of stuff that would psychologically damage normal Americans, and you don't have to re-integrate robots into normal society afterwards.
But, after you release the robotic hounds, it'll only take about ten nanoseconds for the local equivalent of Viet Cong to figure out that they can make a whole bunch of AK-47 stencils (you fold 'em in half for safe carrying) and stencil "destroy this" on whatever they want.
So, the mayor's car gets an AK-47, the local CIA listening post gets a few dozen, etc. etc. and the robots blow the living shit out of them. You can use black spray paint at night and the robots won't see 'em until morning, or you can use various solutions that are invisible under most circumstances but will show up in IR, or when light is reflecting off the surface, or whatever.
A few days later, Fat Tony, the local "legitimate businessman", realises that he can have his "associates" spray paint AKs on his competitors' cattle herd and then phone in an anonymous tip to the local American occupation force about guerillas hiding in the competing stockyard. Then the Baptists figure out they can spraypaint AKs on the Buddhist temple, or whatever.
Obviously, the Armed Forces don't want the local outlaws calling the shots, regardless of whether the locals are political, religious or economic outlaws.
Solve that problem and you'll make a world where Abu Ghraib and Bagram will seem like the good ol' days.
Robotech Robots also are able to violate the first law! How amazing, considering the advanced state of positronic brains toda.... what? We don't actually even have positronic brains yet and I Robot is a book and not a historical document from the future? My bad.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
But that would ruin the new Battlestar Galactica. Not knowing who is a cylon spy is half the tension in that show. For my entertainment's sake, it is best that we keep this "law" off the books.
- doug
When I served in the special operations community, as an Airborne Ranger, there was a rumor going around that the M60 placed 6th during testing but was chosen because it had ties to American companies. The 240G and later 240B were solid reliable weapons, you could practically hold a belt of ammo, pull the trigger and watch the weapon climb its-self up the belt. Admittedly I've used the M60 very little but I remember that you had to feed the ammo in just right, parts fit in more than one way, and failed quite often. This pretty much puts the final nail in the M60s coffin and confirms my believe that they were always pretty much crap. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who used the 60 and 240 extensively.
"This fellow is a fine previous example of an exception to Azimov's first law."
As in the main story, this is a machine controlled by a human and has nothing to do with Azimov's laws. Also, they are not the kind of laws that have "exceptions", they are the kind of laws that get broken.
I would bet that humans probably have been killed by (sudo) AI, but I can't think of any possibilities.
Are there any robots in existence that are Three Laws Safe? Are there any robots at all that have any of Asimov's laws?
We have had UAV's that can kill with bombs for YEARS, and if you know ANYTHING about the M1 Abrams tank, The Apache Longbow, or the F16 etc, you already know that robotic extensions of human capabilities have been present in warfare for decades. This particular case only seems to be a little bit scarier to some because of the semi-anthropomorphised nature of the robot itself. Remember, just because it is not in HUMAN form does not mean it is not a robot.
... only a clarification of a gaping flaw in the Laws themselves.
All that is required to be "compliant" is to define "human" as anything wearing a preoperly-encrypted set of dogtags. All others are inhuman infidels.
De-humanization of the enemy has been a part of military preparedness going back as far as the concept of "military" has existed.
You're coworker was right, there is no bottom and it's not just Slashdot. It sucks when people who share some interests with me think that way. I guess I worry people look at me the same way:)
What a bunch of bullshit.
"I have never won a debate with an ignorant person." -Ali ibn Abi Talib
I realize that the show is fiction, but the ideals, I believe, are not at all far fetched. Without the ultimate horror of war, the loss of human life, there is no motivation for the war to end, and peace to be declared.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
There is really only 1 law: "Do no harm." All other laws are merely codification of what constitues "harm" and what the consequences for doing harm are. Even a robot following Asimov's 3 laws is presented with a dilemma: what if by doing harm to a human I can prevent a much greater harm from occuring to far more humans? (This dilemma probably formed the basis for some of Asimov's stories; I haven't read them all.) But the solution is clear: sometimes you've got to harm humans in order to result in the least net harm to humans.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Uh, these just look like remote controlled tanks.
They were more like guidelines anyway...
Slashdot - Where the slash is most definitely to the left.
It's worth noting that you're mentioning non-directed weapons, but don't speak of high powered directed weapons.
One thing is for sure - when Washington can deploy unlimited numbers of semi-autonomous robot soldiers the citizenry has no chance of staging a revolution. That's probably going to happen in the first half of this century if nobody does anything to prevent it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
The fourth Geneva Convention governs treatment of civilian personnel.
True, I stand corrected. They do, however, set forth that a soldier must be in uniform to be treated as a legal combatant. This is not an arbitrary distinction: Bill Whittle wrote an excellent essay on the subject of the covenant of sanctuary.
This would be true had the US not proceeded unilaterally,
I'm sure that the 32 other countries who sent troops to Iraq three years ago would be quite surprised to hear that the US acted unilaterally, as you've just stated. Try telling it to a Brit, for a start.
but obtained a second resolution from the UN.
A second resolution? Try counting them up.
the US was lying.
Nope, the US was fooled by Saddam's posturing. His own officers were stunned to learn shortly before the attack that Saddam didn't have the WMD's anymore.
BTW, it is a matter of record that 1) he had them in the past, 2) he'd used them, both against Iranian soldiers and his own civilians, and that 3) he was stonewalling the weapons inspectors. There was no way to know that he'd gotten rid of them, because he insisted on jerking the weapons inspectors around. With hindsight, you can claim otherwise, but every member of congress who voted to authorize the attack saw the very same information that the white house did.
Hence, illegal invasion.
Nope. Resumption of combat operations in a war that Saddam started with an unprovoked invasion of a neighboring country in 1991.
If you want to argue legalities, then you're missing the biggest one of all, which is an American constitutional issue: the last war that the US congress actually declared was World War II. Every war the USA has fought since then has been not merely illegal, but unconstitutional, but that's a violation of US law, not international law. There's a reason why the constitution reserves the power to declare war to the congress: it's supposed to be difficult to do.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Do you actually have visible foam on your mouth right now? Just curious.
It seems like everyone knows about Asimovs laws of robotics. But when I see people recomend them I wonder how many people have actually read any of ASimovs stories. I read most if not all his robot stories and a common plot device is the problem with such primitive and simple laws. Read the stories and you will see a lot of problems the basic laws can produce.
Many of the deployed RPV aircraft are piloted from stateside bases. Although it is rather encouraging our soldiers may be able to perform some dangerous tasks such as shooting people without the bother of being shot at themselves. On the otherhand the kill or be killed equation is completely changed. I wonder what the remote control senerio will mean to the fire/don't fire decision process.
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
Skynet is portrayed as a revolutionary neural net-based artificial intelligence built by Cyberdyne Systems. It was given control over the U.S. Iraq ground patrols for reasons of efficiency, and programmed with a directive of hunting down all possible enemies. It started to learn at a geometrical rate, and soon concluded that its greatest threat was President Bush. To neutralize this threat it initiated a nuclear war August 29th, 2007 (known as Judgment Day) between the United States, Iran, and Pakistan with the intent of killing as many humans as possible.
Skynet gained access to several autonomous military drones (such as the T-1), using them to round up survivors, who were forced to build automatic factories and robots that were better at construction than the military robots. Skynet then killed these human slaves, and using the infrastructure they had been forced to start, rapidly designed newer and better machines until it controlled an extremely advanced empire centered on a city-state located in the state of Colorado in the United States, known as Sector Zero on Earth by 2029, at the Cheyenne Mountain complex, presumably the precise former location of NORAD.
I don't think they are any robots that implement the three laws, if I'm wrong please correct me.
Go stand around any industrial robot arm, turn off all safeties and then let the arm do what it normally does. Now move into it's path.
Reality has a notoriously liberal bias -- Stephen Colbert
And what the hell does the level of education have to do with anything? That's just being a snob.
First of all, I am IN NO WAY defending the grandparent post. These comments are intended to be tangential.
People who don't have much intelligence (or education) tend to dislike those who say it is important. The same is true of people who don't have much money (they dislike people who think money is important) or people who are ugly (they dislike people who think looks matter) etc. Regardless of the commodity, the have-nots often want to convince themselves that what they lack is really insignificant, so they naturally get defensive whenever anyone challenges that idea.
In the specific case of education, I will say this. Education leads to intelligence. Not always, of course. No education system is perfect and the one in America is agreeably far from perfect. However, its what we've got, and in general well educated people do tend to be more intelligent than not-so-well educated people.
And why does intelligence matter? Because unintelligent people make unintelligent decisions, and unintelligent decisions are harmful. They are not only harmful to the person making them, but also harmful to everyone around him. Unintelligent voting can put very harmful policies in place, unintelligent shopping habits can have very bad environmental/economical consequences, unintelligent hardware use can injure or kill people, unintelligent tactical decisions can kill lots of innocent people and maybe result in the loss of a war, etc.
So, since unintelligence can be quite harmful, intelligence is supremely important in all walks of life. That is why some find it disturbing that the military includes a lot of people who are well-armed but not well-educated. This is a recipe for disaster.
The only thing I will say in defense of unintelligence in the military is this: people who are not very good at independant thought do tend to be more obedient, and I guess that is a good thing when you are trying to convince lots of them to go stand in the path of a bullet.
Clearly this hasn't been thought through, I mean, seriously, don't you think people will set up a robots.txt blocking this specific robot?
This is going to adorn pretty much every wall.
ROBOTS.TXT PLASE READ MR. ROBOT YOU CAN'T BE HERE!
User-agent: Military attack robot
Disallow: *
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
I mean yeah these are "Robots", but by this definition so are the Preditors and they have been firing Hellfire missiles in combat for almost 5 years now.
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
But it was not the US's role to unilaterally enforce that.
Ever hear of the United Kingdom? How about Italy? The Ukraine? Or any of the other 32 countries that participated in that enforcement?
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
See http://www.berserker.com/
"Long ago, in a distant part of the galaxy, two alien races met--and fought a war of mutual extinction. The sole legacy of that war was the weapon that ended it: the death machines, the BERSERKERS. Guided by self-aware computers more intelligent than any human, these world-sized battlecraft carved a swath of death through the galaxy--until they arrived at the outskirts of the fledgling Empire of Man.
What that means is that there isn't actually an Al Qaeda, an almighty mega organization with thousands of sleeper cells ready to attack at any minute along with a centralized command center in the mountains of Afghanistan somewhere. You believe that or you think you believe that because you have been hearing it and seeing it on US media. Bin Ladin himself, before 9/11 _never_ referred to his organization as Al Qaeda, he addopted the name after the US said that "Al Qaeda is responsible" so he started using "Al Qaeda" since then. He doesn't have thousands of armed men protected him in a bunker somewhere. In one of the videos you see him with many such uniformed soldiers but he allegedly hired them for the day from a local war lord so they can appear on the video. "Al Qaeda" exists but it is actually small extremist groups of muslim men in certain countries that will be willing to kill themselves and civilians to shock and scare the world. Any such group of men is "Al Qaeda" -- they might not even know or have any connection with Bin Ladin's group. Sometimes these men will ask for donations from imams or wealthy arabs, but they don't all get salaries and health plans from Bin-Ladin. Anyway, watch the "Power of Nightmares" movie. It is a British documentary talking about this. It is very well done. You can download it for free . There is also a Wiki page on it, check it out, just search on Google, it will come up.
As a matter of fact, I'll bet that by going to the fiction section of your local library and picking up some books containing fictional worlds with fictional laws, you can find all *sorts* of fictional laws that would be broken in our world if they were laws here.
Hell, Slashdot could run a story like this every five minutes and never run out of stories!
Any program relying on (nontrivial) preemptive multithreading will be buggy.
don't complicate matters with such trivial things.
The reality is that soldiers Don't have Ethics, otherwise, they wouldn't be soldiers of the USA (We all know what kind of polices the US Army has, if you decide to participate in it, you are a just like them, and there is no excuse you can use to argue with that).
So did the soldiers of the USA who fought in World War II have ethics? What about the soldiers of the USA who fought in Korea? World War I? The US Civil War? Desert Storm?
Or is it just that the soldiers of the USA who are involved in conflicts you don't support are without ethics? If soldiers are instruments of the state, shouldn't you be directing your ire at the elected government (and by extension the electorate) that ordered the soldiers and Marines to fight in Iraq? What if after the invasion of Iraq, the US had actually excecuted a smart policy, kept the Iraqi Army intact, quickly rehabilitated the Iraqi infrastructure, and then left? Would those same soldiers and Marines still have been without ethics?
Does a soldier sitting in a National Guard base in Oregon have ethics? Does a soldier evacuating refugees have ethics? What about a soldier who guards food relief caravans? Are all soldiers the same in their ethics? Is a scumbag MP who beat defenseless prisoners the same as a Special Forces soldier who hauls Saddam out of a hole in the ground, so he can face trial?
Your brush is far too broad.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Anyway, this post will probably never see the light of day since I'm so late to the party. However if anyone has questions about the Talon or SWORDS systems I can certainly point you towards the most relevent public information on them. NO, I cannot tell you operational details, components, number in service or other sensitive data. But I do have a unique perspective since I work with these everyday and I can certainly dispel any myths or misunderstandings that have most likely been furthered by this thread (only read at +4 but didn't see anything glaringly incorrect thus far.)
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
vwjeff@terrorfighter /$ rm /bin/laden
/$ rm -drf /
rm: cannot remove `/bin/laden': No such file or directory
Nevermind. I guess my Linux box isn't the only one who can not find Bin Laden. Perhaps I'll:
vwjeff@terrorfighter
just to make sure he's gone.
It turns out that this image of the Soviet Union as an uber-powerful country that will invade at any minute now, was in the interests of the neo-cons in power. It is known now that Congressional groups influenced by them, would go through the CIA evidence and re-interpret and mix everything with fantasy to make it sound as if the Russians have reached this unprecedented level of technological achievements and are ready to "push the button" at any minute. The media didn't know, it just regurgitated everything that the government told it to. So the minds and oppinions of ordinary Americans are controlled by this small group of people who have it as their main principle to hold the society in fear so they can control it.
Watch the "Power of Nightmares" movie. It is a British documentary, aired on BBC a while ago and now it is free for download here . It is very educational, it talks about the idiological forces behind the US neo-cons, and Islamic extremism, how it started how both clashed. There is also a Wiki page about the movie, check it out. Just search on Google for it. Warning: it is a 3 hour long thing, but I didn't regret taking that time to see it.
Both these weapons (m249 and m240g) get really hot. You have to fire them in 3 second strings and swap out the barrels every 300 rounds or so. While you're letting the barrel cool between strings or changing out the barrel... that's when the enemy attacks you.
So a common technique is "talking machine guns". You have 2 gun crews and they take turns with the firing strings, so there are always rounds going down range and the barrels stay relatively cool. Hopefully you can stagger changing out the barrels too.
So how do the robots handle this? You'd need moving parts that handle the ammo chain. Either it would have to be able to reload from standard chains by itself or troops would have to link many chains together and load them into a drum beforehand. If you've got a long chain you need an armature to twist the chain in case of a runaway gun. And then there's the barrels. You need more moving parts to change those out. And what if it drops one?
So to deal with those cooling issues with these weapons you may need 2 weapons per robot or 2 robots working in tandem.
But even that's not ideal. A minigun is a far better weapon for this kind of thing. The ones on the blackhawks would be perfect. We already can order them in bulk, the barrels stay cool and in the case of a runaway gun, you just cut power to the motor. And the moving parts are far less compicated. Much easier to maintain in the field.
The only advantage I can see to deploying the m249 or m240g is that the robot and troops could share ammo and the troops know how to service them. But the m134 minigun already uses the same ammo as the m240g and if you're going to service a robot, you probably are going to get special training anyway.
Oh, and in peacetime can they clean my carpets?
"Let him go, Ralph. He knows what he's doing." --Otto Mann (simpsons)
Whatever his ability as a writer, Asimov's laws are a ridiculous piece of fiction. The notion that for some reason a positronic brain would have to obey these laws is nothing but a fictional contrivance. Taking these laws seriously in the real world is about as silly as wondering if the girl sitting in the next room is actually Jane Eyre. So how did these 'laws' gain any kind of currency? I guess simply because Asimov was so famous. He was so well respected, in his day, that he could spout nonsense and have thousands of people take him literally at his word. With behaviour like this it's easy to see how religions get started.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
This crap gets thrown out all the time. There are a *few* groups with foreign fighters, but these are mostly the worst of the terrorist groups, and also the smallest groups.
A blog about stuff.
For some reason the link to Foster-Miller didn't get included in the final post. Here is our public page for http://www.foster-miller.com/lemming.htm Talon Robots with links to some brochures and media. And no, I don't know who named the html page "lemming" or why.
-- I'm not a pessimist, I'm a realist. It's not my fault that life sucks so much. --
There are a handful of UAV platforms that have weapons delivery capabilities. Predator is the best example. They are flown by human pilots from a ground station, but it wouldn't be difficult to program them with some heuristics to blow sh*t up on their own inside a kill box.
But you just told us you have a reading comprehension problem.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
First off, Asimov didn't make any 'laws'. These were guidelines which he readily broke in his own fiction at several points. These so-called laws existed within the framework of fiction as part of a plot device. This mock outrage is almost pathetic as Trekkers who scream about the Air Force wanting to develop warp drive because the Federation isn't supposed to be a military force. (Which is also bullshit since every Federation ship can do battle at the drop of a hat, but I digress.)
More importantly, these devices are not robots by any stretch of the imagination. They are not independant of human control. They are not 'automatons'. In fact, they are nothing more than RC cars with guns strapped to them - something friends of mine have been doing for years. It also bears pointing out that guided missiles such as the venerated Tomahawk, and anti-tank mines or area-denial munitions do fit the definition of a primitive robot in that they operate without user input, make decisions as to how to best carry out their instructions. They have been for over two decades now. And the break every one of Asimov's 'laws'. So kindly move on now...
During the first Gulf War, the pentagon released footage of a self-guided missile which had been trained on a truck driving down the highway. Luck had it that the truck drives into a huge crater left by an earlier bomb and disappears from the view finder of the missile.
The missile is no longer locked on target and unsure what to do, when suddenly the driver of the truck climbs out the hole and back into the field of view and starts running. The self-guided missile, in the absence of all other more valuable targets is programmed to strike humans so it zeroes in on the poor bastard and blows them again.
Of course, if you look at convention four and you realize that either you have to treat someone as a prisoner of war, a hostile civilian (saboteur, spy, ununiformed fighter, etc), or a regular civilian. There is no forth category which affords no rights what-so-ever. Everyone that falls into the control of a country which they are not a national of is protected, perioded. Now, the rights you have are different, depending on your classification, but you still have rights.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
"Yesterday we ran a 100-mile test where the lead vehicle was being driven manually and the robot was following," Jaczkowski said. "We did this successfully where the average speed was about 22 miles per hour. You may think that 22 miles per hour is not that fast when operational convoys are going 60 to 70 miles per hour. But you have to take into account that we did 68 right turns.
"You don't take right turns at 50 miles per hour, especially with a 20-ton robot."
Thank you for the daily dose of political crap spewed out the trap of an idiot.
That's because the winner usually writes the history books.
What was that old saying? Ah, google...
"Treason doth never prosper, for if it prosper, no one dare call it treason."
Ovid, 14 AD
come on mod him up, he is only speaking the truth.
Real robots in war were among us since cruise missiles were created. Some of them decide which path they go, at least within certain limits. A fast search in Wikipedia about the Tomahawk shows that those missiles have extremely advanced controlling systems. They have (cited directly from Wikipedia):
"TERCOM - Terrain Contour Matching. An in-flight altimeter meaures the height from the TLAM to the ground and the missile will check to see if it is in the right spot from the height. It will make corrections if it does match the prestored height
DSMAC - Digital Scene Matching Area Correlation. A small image is taken of the flight path and downloaded into the TLAM before it is launched. During the flight the missile will verify that the images that it has stored correlates with the image it sees below itself. If the pictures do not match it will correct itself and then finish its mission."
Another fragment is quite interesting:
"[referring to the tactical Tomahawk]By far the biggest improvement is making the Tomahawk network-centric warfare-capable, using data from multiple sensors (aircraft, UAVs, satellites, foot soldiers, tanks, ships) to find its target. It will also be able to send data from its sensors to these platforms. It will be a part of the networked force envisioned by the Pentagon."
It may not be R2-D2 but, at least for me, this qualifies for a quite advanced robot.
For militar robots, Asimov laws would be plain nonsense. Anyhow, at the current level of AI technology, we don't even have the choice. As Rodney Brooks uses to say (in "Flesh and Machines", for example), he doesn't program his robots with the Asimov laws because he doesn't even know how to do it.
Webglee. Reach me at http://www.blogger.com/profile/18937525
http://www.asimovlaws.com/articles/
http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/SOS/Asim ov.html
Every Robot and Foundation Story by Asimov and the three Bs. :http://www.asimovonline.com/
Not one mention of the Zeroeth Law in the whole thread, you people disgust me.
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Good point - I don't think any of Asimov's laws have EVER been programmed into a robot, because a) they are hard to translate into code and b) the robot pretty much has to be as intelligent as a human (e.g. passes the Turing Test) in order to understand and follow the laws!
That violent future history of robotics leading to the creation of the three laws could have made a story in and of itself, but asimove relegated it to a footnote -- because that sort of story would be something of a literary FPS... Go in, kill things get killed, clean up the mess. Not a whole lot of plot device in there.
On the other hand, the three laws -- while looking simple and 'safe' introduced all sorts of dilemas and thought experiments -- like, what do you do when people have to go into a slightly harmful area?
What happens when your choice is between one person dying and another?
Can you hurt someone to prevent him from killing someone?
Is suicide (and thus breaking the third law) better than chosing how to break the first law?
Is (secret) interference with humanity's destiny justifiable to (hopefully) minimize suffering.
None of those plotlines are possible without the 3 laws. On the other hand, any plot that requires that any of the 3 laws don't exist can be facilitated by the simple (and very believable) plot device of having a human take the 'shortcut' of removing or modifying the 3 laws so as to allow something 'important' (or just profitable) to get done.
(( ... and you realize, of course, that getting to the point where an autonomous entity could even recognize when a possible violation of the three laws was occuring would be the excuse for creating and wallowing in entire fields of artificial intlligence that have, so far, only had their surfaces scratched. ))
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
With any luck it will be using MS$ software which will require a MS$ admin running beside it hitting the reset button during lockups or constantly updating the anti-virus packages. I suspect it would be design to shoot only non license users of MS$ software or the real enemy terrorests.. Linux users. Out side of that I am sure when you hit the fire button, there will be some delay due to the feature bloat, so the enemy will have time to get out of the way. Make sure you read the MS$ license before you operate this robot. Your life may depend on it.
If it doesn't have at least some degree of autonomy, then it is not a robot. If it is not a robot, then the rules don't apply.
Ignoring the lost aversion to "sending our men and women into harm's way" as a deciding factor for going to war. Robots in combat may have a few advantages outside of "killing power." A remote robot need not decide between its own well being and a potential target in a combat situation, and military security/peacekeeping details are riddled with such problems. So many awful stories begin: "It looked as if the person/car might be a hostile. I ordered them to stop, but they did not understand or comply and I was forced to open fire to protect myself and my unit." A remote operator can take the chance that a target may be friendly and not fire until the target is clearly hostile. The most that may be lost is a robot. Additionally, a robot is more likely to hit what is necessary and avoid collateral damage from inaccurate fire.
Is it hard reality? No, of course not. But neither are the depictions in Frankenstein, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, Jurassic Park, Gattaca, or Animal Farm or Watership Down for that matter. But clearly these are important pieces of thinking on the issues they address--issues like surveillance technology, abuse of political power, genetic manipulation, etc.
Speculative fiction is often where the implications of technological change are first addressed. The most successful practitioners are literally thought leaders, because their stories are sometimes the first to draw out concepts of the future to possible implications or conclusions. That is why science fiction authors are often sought out as consultants to private or public enterprises that push tech barriers. It's not because they are necessarily "right" about the future, but because they are thinking about the issues in unique or broader or farther-reaching ways.
For instance Asimov didn't create his laws as hard-nosed coding advice for modern programmers. They are just part of his larger consideration of a) what it would take for the public to accept sentient robots among them, and b) what are the practical and ethical implications of trying to hard-code rigid laws onto actual intelligence? You say they wouldn't work for law-enforcement robots, and you might be righter than you know...would the public even accept law enforcement robots, even with such laws in place? A question like this is where a science fiction story (and the public reaction to it) can be very illuminating.
Unless you've got some real sentient machines we can use for hard research, we're stuck with thought experiments in considering the implications of such machines. Asimov's stories involving robots are some of the most detailed and coherent examples. They serve as common ground upon which to start conversations...for example this one. They don't need to be "right" or "accurate" to serve that purpose.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In order for a law to be broken, it has to exist first. A killing machine such as this is merely a gun with a remote control. It's not a robot in the sense that there would even be a place for such a law in its programming.
Also, I'm willing to bet that there will be more documentation of robot kills than when a human soldier makes a kill.
Having a remote-controlled robot implies some sort of vision system (e.g. a video feed), which is pretty easy to record. Even if you don't record the video feed all the time (which given the military's thirst for data I think is actually pretty likely), it's easy to have a continuous buffer of 5 - 10 minutes that would get saved when a command to fire a weapon was given. There's precident for this -- think of the gun cameras on WWII fighter aircraft.
That way the robot operator always has something to CYA with, and you have a lot of good material to use in training and during the AAR/hotwash. You don't have fuzzy situations where five different guys remember five different things, and it's nearly impossible to tell whether the ROE were followed.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
they're recommendations
Considering the fact that they're
a) based on rational ideas and
b) based in humanitarian ideals,
it's no surprise that they'll be violated constantly.
-------- In Soviet Russia, "Soviet Russia" sigs hate Slashdot.
"the 9/11 attack was from afghani citizens that were disgruntled about our actions in the 1970's"
And I had hoped that only the poor suckers flew the planes into the buildings were dumb enough to belive that.
Chalk me up as one more person who is overwhelmed by the amount of stupidity and gullibility generally in the world and specifically in you.
You can't. The editor likely didn't know this, and used bytes as his example. Feel free to replace "bytes" with "liters," if it helps.
On a related note, no one will lynch you for using mb for megabytes, either.
Old news. Mines are just such machines. Besides the Russians have had for quite some time this full auto perimeter defence system consisting a machine gun (or a auto granade launcher) mounted on a IR auto-aiming pod. A soldier or a platoon sets it up at night and sleeps under it, and anything hot that appears within 100m radius gets machinegunned (or if you have more than one you set some arcs of fire).
"Just we're as corrupt, sell the oil to you americans to be refined and then buy back the Gas at a higher price."
There's no corruption showing there. Maybe some foolishness, if your simplistic analysis is correct, but not corruption. (From looking at the intelligence of the rest of your posts in this thread, I think we can safely ignore the possibility of you being correct.)
"Saddam had neither the means nor the inclination of invading the states."
Saddam had (still has) the inclination to rule the world, and did what he could to rule as much as possible.
This doesn't necessarily mean that the US-led invasion of Iraq was a good thing, it merely shows how large your disconnect from logic and reality is.
That's the reality.
These are nothing more than fancy rc toys , albeit deadly ones.
Another hasty, uninformed, incorrect generalization. Are you Tom in disguise?
I don't have a television, and haven't for 10 years, but I'd have modded him down if I'd had the points.
Wow, I love it when people try to play along with the Bush administration's legalese games. So, if Taliban fighters in the service of a country too dirt poor to afford uniforms, then well technically they're not uniformed soldiers! (I literally heard this argument being made on cable TV news) Our government can't concoct some sort of loophole in law, then exploit it to afford people with NO rights whatsoever. If Bush thinks there should be a new category, then petition for it to be defined, don't start making up your own damned rules as you go along.
And, assuming your clip is valid, you only have to meet 1 of the listed criteria (..."one of the following categories...").
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Using Hiroshima as an example of irresponsible use of nuclear weapons will always set off the Stupidity Alarm.
How many people died in a week of firebombing in Tokyo?
How are the Iraqis fighting the US any different than the French resistance movement in WWII? Whether or not you think what the US is doing is right or wrong has nothing to do with these people's status.
Maybe you should learn how to read.
"one of the following categories" refers to the two categories that follow it, not the *conditions* of the second category. The conditions of the second category are all considered requisite.
The parent's reading skills have been brought to you by the Herculean efforts of the Democrat-dominated teachers' unions.
because it isn't really a serious article, it is solely based on a Sci-Fi story.... I know we would all like to see every Sci-fi thought that comes into our heads become reality, but c'mon.... Let's get angry at M$-not Asimov's fiction... but at the fact that the US army will one day be automatons.... and his fictional laws won't mean Dick! And I don't mean Philip....
Sig Hansen?
Does it squeal like ED-209 when it is destroyed?
What part of our militia is well regulated in your eyes then? Your code reference states there can be an unorganized and organized militia however the 2nd amendment states a well regulated militia which I don't believe most current gun owners are a part of.
~S
This is fore REAL (points to rifle)... This is for FUN (points to groin)...
So, I wonder if these robots can have a REAL hung, slung gun. With a robot, you can mount the gun ANYwear (anywhere)...
Deal with those robots by spraying sand, wire filaments, and acid bombs in their path.
Tie them up by deploying skeet-shot mounts in their way and have them waste their fucking ammo before they even reach their objective.
Hmmm... another project having to be ?"rethunk"?
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
Be prepared!
3 5/qid=1142460074/sr=8-3/ref=pd_ka_3/203-9759404-33 31145
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/07475802
James
A couple of weeks ago I tried to submit the following story to slashdot, without any luck. I think it's fairly related to the current topic, and has a rather interesting video showing the helicopter firing its rapid-fire shotgun:
A small company called Neural Robotics has produced a robotic mini-helicopter armed with a rapid-fire shotgun. Based on their off-the-shelf AutoCopter, the UAV uses neural network-based flight control algorithms to fly in either a self-stabilizing semi-autonomous mode controlled by a remote operator, or a fully-autonomous mode which can follow GPS waypoints. A video of the AutoCopter Gunship is available.
Stepping aside the ethical issues of replacing soldiers with flying shotgun-wielding robots for the moment, their "neural network-based" flight control system seemed like an interesting technical accomplishment. This PDF briefing has a few details.
Taking a look at page 14 of their PDF though, perhaps their control system is a little on the simplistic side. It seems to just update roll and pitch based on the current movement and facing of the helicopter, without making use of visual information or other sensors. I'm not too familiar with flight control, but using a neural network for that seems like overkill. When in fully-autonomous mode, I wonder if they make use of sensors for crash-avoidance at all, or if they just hope that nothing's in the way of the chosen GPS coordinates.
Assuming they haven't done so already, it would be rather neat to load some range-finding sensors on the helicopter and have it automatically avoid nearby obstacles; the basic algorithms should be fairly straightforward.
Another idea is to allow the robot to visually track a point of laser light, potentially allowing somebody to control the robot with a designated laser. The military application of this is pretty obvious: You could quickly point a laser wherever the people shooting at you are hiding, so that the robot knows what area to scope out. A laser could also be used to trace out a patrol route for the robot, so that a user doesn't have to deal with typing in cumbersome GPS coordinates.
As for civilian applications, the AutoCopter with a stabilized camera might be useful for filming video. One could imagine a system of two designated laser pointers, one for each hand. One pointer would designate a spot for the robot to hover over, while another pointer would indicate where the robot should direct its camera. Of course, one could alternatively just hire a dedicated RC operator, so perhaps this would be of limited usefulness.
If we could just find human beings (esp. politicians) who had to operate under asimov's laws ...
Have you bought an Intel processor lately? They're rampantly violating Moore's Law. I think they need to be fined. Or someone should at least catalogue their violations in a blog.
If it weren't for AMD, Intel would be thumbing their nose at the Law all the time.
And where's my Flying Car, anyway? It's the 21st Century, for good grief.
This book belongs in the humor section, not with the science fiction or (as I found it) engineering books. Its deadpan delivery is funny in a Monty Python "How not to be seen" way. The author recommends exploiting the very real limitations such robots might exhibit if they were based on today's industrial robot technology. Distort your silhouette, mask your thermal signature, do NOT anthropomorphise, etc. I learned a few things about modern industrial robotics .
This standard sized paperback is a quick read. It contains large print and is printed on unusually thick glossy paper with silver leaf edges. It doesn't feel like an ordinary book.
Remotely-piloted/operated vehicles are not "robots" the way the public is accustomed to thinking of them. Technology like this has existed since wire-guided bombs and remote-control anti-tank mines were developed in the Second World War. And the way pilots and AFV crewmen rely on instruments and night-vision devices, they really have the same situational awareness as the controls of an RPV that they'd have in the cockpit or buttoned up in their vehicle. This is a non-issue, stop feeding media hype.
I really wish people would stop referring to Asimov's Laws of Robotics as if they had any external validity. They applied to FICTIONAL robots in his stories. They have no connection to the real world and real robots, as this article (and undoubtedly endless future warbots will) demonstrates. Breaking them is unremarkable, and referring to them in news stories serves only to perpetuate the idea in the minds of the ignorant that they have significance outside the context of sci-fi.
http://iraqthemodel.blogspot.com/
http://alimohamed.blogspot.com/
http://baghdadgirl.blogspot.com/
http://democracyiniraq.blogspot.com/
http://www.friendsofdemocracy.info/
http://healingiraq.blogspot.com/
http://messopotamian.blogspot.com/
http://inlovewithiraq.blogspot.com/
Read what actual, really there all the time, Iraqis say.
The Three laws aren't accepted purely because everyone's a big Asimov geek, but because they make sense and they work. He doesn't need to be a robotics expert, Asimov was a very intelligent man and had some marvellous ideas. Ideas come from all kinds of places, not just white-coats. If it wasn't for Star Trek, a lot of real world advanced physics would probably be years behind what we have now.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
I'm not saying that the Three Laws are perfect, or the best way to approach robotics. In Asimov's novels people ended up creating 4-law robots, and a no-law robot(Caliban). But I think that they have become "accepted" because they are a good starting point for robotics that don't harm humans, and they can work. My main point was however, not to pitty patty someone just because they're not a qualified expert.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
When George W. Bush, removed from presidency, attempts to take over the world with 8 military robot masters, who is going to be there to stop him!? His own incompetence most likely, but that's another story.
EpiAdv - if you like Pokey the Penguin, try this comic!
Cool! Amazing Toys.
duh. I realize that a lot of people get that wrong, but a teleoperated vehicle is NOT a robot!
Remember that movie, how the self-aware self-replicating killer robots were called "mobile sword" or something like that?
Just like everything else about the Iraq war, nothing can go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...go wrong...
Table-ized A.I.
This is my robot.
There are many like it, but this one is MINE.
My robot is my best friend. It is my life.
I must master it as I must master my life.
My robot without me is useless. Without my robot, I am useless.
I must fire my robot true.
I must order him to shoot straighter than my enemy who is trying to kill me.
My robot must shoot him before he shoots me. I will...
My robot and myself know that what counts in war is not the rounds we fire,
the noise of our bursts, nor the smoke we make.
We know it is the hits that count. We will hit...
My robot is human, even as I, because it is my life.
Thus, I will learn it as a brother.
I will learn its weaknesses, its strengths, its parts, its accessories, its circuits, and its software.
I will ever guard it against the ravages of weather and damage.
I will keep my robot clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready.
We will become part of each other. We will...
Before God I swear this creed.
My robot and myself are the defenders of my country.
We are the masters of our enemy.
We are the saviors of my life.
So be it, until there is no enemy, but PEACE.
You call this a sig?
I really fail to see the interest in this article.
Its just a remote control Tank - I have seen many in gadget shops.
[Pet peeve alert]. Okay, so we whine that these are not "true" robots 'cause they are really just remote control (RC) machines, only a little firepower above those toy monster trucks the gearheads play with. Aren't there enough of us working as editors to get authors to use "[sic]" when quoting misinformed "experts". I think that "[sic]", meaning "hey, they said it, but that don't make it so", is greatly underused and should be brought back into usage, and I see no reason why we can't nit-pick this one. After all, as was pointed out, an AIM-7F/M Sparrow AMRAAM (guidance: "Raytheon Advanced Monopulse Seeker inverse-monopulse semi-active radar homing") is certainly robotic once it leaves the rail. [/Pet peeve alert]
TFA is not discussing Robots at all. It describes remote control devices. A robot is (all but) autonomous, these machines are no more autonomous than the remote control cars we played with as kids. The laws of robotics don't apply.
Those laws concern programming and design, remote devices have no programming. Your washing machine is closer to a robot. A cruise missile is given instructions and the ability to navigate and then follows way points to the target with no operator intervention, that's a robot... designed to break the first law. Though i'd have to say that for military purposes the first law is a non-issue. That's why most weapon systems have a person in the loop.
Think of the show Robot Wars... not a robot in sight. All just remote control cars with weapons and armor.
Now if we were going to build actual combat robots and wanted to apply the first law, it would be modified to state "don't harm/kill non-combatants".
Utilizing the synergization of benchmark e-solutions to pre-workaround action items!
"Oh, I thought it said 'must not INURE a human being'..."
"all the good posts are on fark anyways"
So...you don't post on Fark?
A lot of people don't realize that Asimov added a 4th law ahead of the first 3.
...) into a mountain in 5 minutes rather than a city in 6 minutes, assuming there were no other options...
He called it the Zeroth Law of Robotics - it allowed a Robot to harm a human provided that it would provide a compensating greater benifit to the Human race as a whole (though I'm not sure of the exact wording).
Something like that would be required by an air Traffic Control Robot - to allow the Robot to deliberately crash a plane (running out of fuel, failing engines,
-Nivag
But these laws are written.
Moments later the ST-487 froze, lifeless. Paulsen checked his display, the bright blue of the display reflecting on his tactical visor as he read in amazement:
"An unexpected error has occured. Please restart your system."
Just then the insurgents were creeping over the garden wall, beyond what used to be the swimming pool of the five star Al-hasish Hotel. Archmar Al-Barfbar poised his rifle, taking aim on the ST-487 when he heard a sharp "click" just behind his head.
ST-589 had responded to the network error report, the superior BSD system of '58 series not suffering from the weaknesses of the '48 series, probably saved the entire operation. Archmar never noticed the 7.62 round that entered the base of his skull and exited through his nose, taking most of the contents of his skull with it.
PS anyone wanna write a wikinovel?