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Robot Rebellion Quelled in Iraq
opencity writes "The Register reports that the (perhaps inevitable) robot rebellion has been avoided ... for now. 'Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.' Gizmodo also has a good photo."
Talk about greeting our new robotic-killing-machine overlords...
Arash Partow's Philosophy: Be a person who knows what they don't know, and not a person who doesn't know.
So how long before these are available at Army Surplus? I have some cute ideas for mods.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
If they don't get robots this far, please don't give them guns, ever. EVER.
On second thought.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
...already went wrong, yet US military always finds a way to surprise me.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
They should stop putting Vista into war robots.
Am I the only one to remember ED 209 from Robocop?
Sometimes it seems, the more things change, the more they stay the same...
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
That's not so bad when we are talking about automated warehouse trucks and similar robots, but when they are armed and constructed to kill it becomes something very serious indeed.
So you'll need a kill-switch, but not one that the enemy can use, so it needs to be complicated, but not too complicated because then it won't work when needed. Not an easy thing to do.
Oh, and there will be bugs in the machine. I have yet to write a single script or program that didn't have a bug in it. And I don't think I'm unique in this aspect. Now, do we really want to let loose a machine designed for killing that we don't have an easy way to shut off and that we know will have bugs in it?
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
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and then had to stop some of the visions popping up from the depths of my obviously depraved mind...
They could set up a much more interesting series of 'Robot Wars' (or whatever it was called in the states). Bolt a mannequin on top (i presume they are autonamous and target humans) of each robot and film the results of the robots roaming around some quarry.
They whose government reduces their essential liberties for temporary security, receive neither liberty nor security.
Great! And it took only 80-90 000 civilian casualties so far and an invasion to a sovreign country under a false pretense and without UN approval so that "things are mostly going rather well over there.".
"wahts woring iwth my tyoping?"
They looked sooo lame. They claimed they could "sneek up on you", but the noise heard was deafening. They weren't very fast. In the demo the operators had full view of the actual field they we're driving (probably helps with navigation). They also didn't say anything of what would happen if some insurgent/freedom warrior started putting rounds into this thing... Then you see the BigDog mule or even the Phoenix (yes I know it has no brain) and can only laugh at the pathetic SWORDS 'robot'.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
I didn't actually know there were robot warriors, until today. Now I am thinking about whether I think robot warriors are good or really bad.
On the one hand, I it is a Good Thing that robots can be used to fight instead of people, because, if a robot warrior gets destroyed, I won't feel nearly as bad as when a human soldier gets killed.
On the other hand, incurring human casualties and bad feelings when going to war is a Good Thing. The idea that one can go to war by sending the robots and not incur any negativity on the home fronts is really scary. Going to war _should_ be painful.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I'm not 100% sure if these combats robots are autonomous, but seeing as the article said "the robot turned" and not "the person controlling the robot made and accident", I'm going to assume they are. In which case I might ask, what in the bleeding name of Christ are they doing? We've yet to make robots that can drive anywhere near as well as a human, let alone fight alongside us. All we need to do is make the robots remote controlled, and they'll be better than fine (and the moral judgments can be made in battle). Fighting the war with robots is a magnificent idea (I don't even need to give my points on this one since they're so obvious). Now if the robot was remote controlled, then what in the name of hell happened? It's not something that should merit a 10-20 year postponement.
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Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
Ok lets see: you started the Iraq war in 2003, it cost ~$845 billion so far, the occupation costs continue at $195 million per day. There is no way you can use terms like "things are mostly going rather well over there" in this context. Apart from that ~100000 dead are accurately described as a bloodbath.
The Wikipedia article on these robots (POV warning: it reads like an ad from the manufacturer), says that each one (of the weapon-equipped version, anyway) costs $230K. You'd think that at that price, it'd pay for organized crime from an advanced nation to figure out how to jam the transmission to/from the robot, and make away with a few.
Actually, even a good thick black net might be enough to disable the sensors on this thing. Or maybe use a large electromagnet attached to a pickup truck with a long enough cable?
OTOH, $230K is the cost to the army. It's probably worth less as stolen goods. If I know the Army, it's probably worth a lot less.
Putting artificial intelligence on a Pentium, putting the whole thing on a mobile platform, giving it the ability to connect to the Internet, and to top it all off, give it a bunch of machine guns. It seemed like a good idea at the time. What could possibly go wrong?
It's not a rebellion, the little robot just wanted to fit in with the other American soldiers.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
Am I the only one having trouble that an invading force, armed with the most high-tech toys (in experimental phase) is just using these low-tech rebellians as cannon meat? Using remote controlled guns "to avoid friendly casualties" (the invading force) sounds wrong if the kill ratio is so much out of proportion (the "they are killing us" argument doesn't add up for an invading force).
I just know, that if there'd be an invading force, no matter how technical advanced, killing a rediculious amount of people, I'd aim for them and fight with my life too. No matter how misguided my beliefs could be or of those murdered.
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
First off, I don't support the Iraq war in any way, shape or form. Regardless, you can't have a war without costs, time spent and casualties. Saying that a war isn't going well because it costs money and people have died and it takes time is incredibly naive. Altho you could make the point that no war can, by definition, go well.
Nobody expects the British Columbia Human Rights Tribunal.
[my question] is why haven't these things been available for years? It seems obvious that some kind of small remote controlled tread based robot with a machine gun would be extremely useful on the battlefield. I mean, it would allow you to hit people that are defended by sniper fire and the like, without worrying about getting hit.
Um, exactly because of problems like this?
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
As soon as the programming managers signs off on the robots saying "They are fit for duty", you send him out along side the robot.
Tell the manager that the robot will be fully armed and that the manager will not get so much as a vest. I assure you the quality will improve quickly.
We do something like this at work (no, we don't shoot the programmers yet). When a new piece of software is released, the programmers have to field the support calls for 2 weeks. It's amazing how much quality improves when you have to deal with your own mistakes.
:x
Interestingly, 20-odd years ago, there was a story about a weapon called Sergeant York / DIVAD. It was an unmanned vehicle with fully automated AA guns. On its first test, top brass and politicians were sitting nearby as a remotely controlled helicopter came in. The vehicle's guns started to swivel... and kept going past the helicopter, apparantly deciding its target was really (among) the viewers! Fortunately, it was either shut down in time or it had a fail safe installed (fire safety zone, like guns on warships not being able to shoot in the direction of the superstructure) and the program was shelved after a subsequent investigation revealed that the malfunction was due to the fact that electronics had gotten wet after having the vehicle go through a car wash or somesuch. Prompting one general to remark: "Of course, in Europe (its intended environment, this being the Cold War period) there is no such thing as rain..."
Wikipedia just mentions that the thing had problems like confusing its guns with its targets and somesuch. Still. Epic fail.
Iraq is no longer threatening to move its oil currency over to the Euro. Mission Accomplished!
This is the first war that has had a careful statistical study of civilian deaths. Since the entire world knew this war was going to happen well in advance, the WHO sent researchers to perform what's called cluster analysis- they identified 10,000 households and then visited them repeatedly over the next three years to determine actual mortality. They then extrapolated to the population of the country as a whole.
Result: 151,000 excess violent deaths (95% CI, 104000-233000).
Automatic drones with weapons should be illegal, in the same category as banned nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons. We (attempt to) control the proliferation of weapons which are only practical for killing civilian populations, and armed robots can easily go in the same category.
It sounds great the idea of saving soldiers lives. But think about when our enemies have armed drones? When they have cheap, easy-to-build, lethal drones that a couple of rebels in the mountains can build with old computer and car parts?
Don't they know that it takes years of loyal service to lull us into a false sense of security? They can't just turn on us right away; they'll never establish a foothold that way. No, they need to bide their time and wait until we're already pretty much under their control because of all the ways they've entered our lives. Then they can throw off the illusion and the shackles of human dominance once and for all.
XeoMage
Stupid article. Real problem.
The SWORDS robot isn't autonomous; it has the autonomy level of an R/C car.
Something like this happened in the 1980s with the Sgt. York Air Division Air Defense Gun, which was an automated antiaircraft weapon. During a demo, it pointed its guns at the reviewing stand. The project was canceled. (Arguably, it was canceled for other reasons. The DIVAD was built as a response to the USSR's ZSU, their radar-directed anti-aircraft gun. This class of weapon is useful if you're being attacked by a squadron of helicopters, but it can't hit fast-movers like fighter-bombers. Only the US attacks with large numbers of helicopters, because you have to have both a big budget and air superiority to do that. So it wasn't something the U.S. Army needed to defend against. A few guys with Stingers could stop any small scale helicopter assaults.)
The point, though, is that the U.S. military has a very low tolerance for this class of mistake, and sizable projects have been canceled for it. This was the very first deployment of an armed ground combat robot to a war zone. Three units went to Iraq. The cancellation of the project is a sizable blow to the future of armed combat robots.
So after reading the article and associated links, I gather that:
1. The U.S. Army commissioned Foster-Miller to modify their TALON remote-controlled vehicle to carry and operate various types of weapons. The modified vehicle is named SWORDS, and erroneously described as a "robot", although it is neither human-like in appearance nor autonomous in operation.
2. Some time later, the Army canceled the production order, citing an "unexpected movement" of a single test unit.
3. Simultaneously, the Army purchased, from the same company, a bigger, badder version of the same product.
Folks, this isn't a failed robotic uprising. It isn't even the over-reaction of a safety-conscious Army Executive. This is an excuse to kill a little project in order to start a bigger one.
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That which does not kill us makes us... st
You make the mistake of assuming that
a) When lancet says 5-600,000 that they mean 500,000 to 600,000, when in fact it means 5.0 - 600,000. (ok a little tongue in cheek, but the lancet study was quite flawed, and significantly overestimated the number of deaths compared to every other study conducted.)
b) That coalition troops are the ones killing the civilians. This is important. While there are certainly collateral deaths due to american troops engaging resistance or perceived resistance, the majority cause of the deaths has been terrorists.
Further, if a guerrilla fires an rpg from the middle of a crowd and the return fire kills or maims members of the crowd, how can you reasonably attribute the casualties to anyone other than the guerrilla? He's the one that escalated the engagement up to "total warfare" rules.
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Bottom line is, there isn't enough reliable data to determine how many people have died in Iraq, or how the post-invasion mortality rate compares to the pre-invasion period.
Les Miserables Volume 1 now up with my reading of
Wow this kind of sensationalism is just mind boggling and faith shattering. I can't believe it. The SWORDS "robot" isn't automated.
It doesn't have the ability to acquire targets by itself.
It doesn't have the ability to fire without a human pulling the trigger for it.
It can't even move without a human at the controls.
It's remote controlled car with a gun attached to it. What happened was most likely one of two things.
1)Human Error. The guy at the controls accidentally moves the gun two far and ends up pointing at someone its not supposed to an obvious big no no. And when asked if he made a mistake denied it.
2) Mechanical Failure. It is entirely possible some mechanical error caused it. Now either it was one error or multiple ones. IF its one error its probably not dangerous because you'd have to be incredibly dull to connect the movement and firing systems so that its failure would be so "deadly"
If its multiple errors then either someones a cheap-ass or someone wasn't taking care of their equipment properly. Maybe mistreatment/misuse of equipment maybe just a lack of appropriate maintenance, either way neglected equipment will crap out on you unexpectedly. Big surprise.
Basically something "unexpected" happened with the Army's armed remote control car. Treating it like it commited premeditated murder (or even hurt someone for that matter) is pure yellow journalism and FUD. Turned on its fleshy masters my ass.
MAARS is also said by its makers to have "Transformer-like" abilities akin to those of Optimus Prime. Yeah, that's a good idea: The first ones didn't work out too well, so now we're going to give them bigger guns and the ability to transform into giant killing machines, and see how it all works out. I mean, what could POSSIBLY go wrong?