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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."
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
youhave30secondstocomply tag?
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.
I was scared BEFORE reading the article...
But INSANE WarBots running around with loaded machine guns AND Viagra powered erections just makes me want to crawl into a dark closet with my blankie....
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?
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
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.
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).
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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the elephants are untrained.