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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!
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
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
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"
My dad was in the navy reserves for ages. He had a tale about this thing. Once they were in port, and a helicopter was landing on the ship. For whatever reason, the Phalanx was left turned on. Something about the rotors on the chopper pissed off (i.e. fooled the sensor algorithms of) the Phalanx, which rapidly swung around and pointed itself at the chopper. Luckily, as the parent post says, there was no ammo, so no shooting. But it scared the bejesus out of the helicopter pilots.
Also, one of the things that makes this thing so kick ass is that once it decides to shoot something, it start shooting (at 4,500 rounds per minute (or 75/sec)) and the radar tracks each bullet's trajectory and corrects the aim based on that. It has eliminated any aiming error before the first bullet gets to the target.
"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."
There is at least one missing law: The robot must know that he is a robot.
Without this one the primary three make no sense.
Baker's Law: Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it
http://www.sigsegv.cx/
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.
Oh, wait ...