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Packs of Robots Will Hunt Down Uncooperative Humans
Ostracus writes "The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to 'develop a software/hardware suite that would enable a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject. The main research task will involve determining the movements of the robot team through the environment to maximize the opportunity to find the subject ... Typical robots for this type of activity are expected to weigh less than 100 Kg and the team would have three to five robots.'"
To be fair, they plan to use the Multi-Robot Pursuit System for less nefarious-sounding purposes as well. They note that the robots would "have potential commercialization within search and rescue, fire fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical and radiation sensing with mobile platforms."
This is eerily reminiscent of the "mechanical hound" from Fahrenheit 451
No, you cannot.
I have it on the authority of a friend that when a police dog comes out of nowhere and leaps on you and you instinctively knock it away, it PISSES THE COPS OFF and the tend to beat the crap out of you. I'm pretty sure you would get a similar reaction from them if you scratch their shiny new toy. Remember, most law enforcement considers this a battle between US and THEM, and they will include these robots in their definition of US.
I can attest to that myself.
It DOES piss them off (especially if your knocking it away with Vibram-soled, steel toe boots), but they don't necessarily beat the crap out of you. They just let the now-very-pissed-off dog chew on you for awhile. That way there are no marks from THEM to indicate excessive force.
The problem here is that the DOG does NOT have to announce himself as a police officer (like I'm gunna see a badge, on the collar, in the dark). That allows the officer to apply force without clearly announcing that you are dealing with someone that your not allowed to DEFEND yourself from. When it happened to me, I had already kicked the dog 4-5 times and been chewed on for 10-15 seconds by the time I had ANY idea there was a cop in the area.
Personally, I think robots would just remove the normal hesitation that most people experience when confronted with the decision of killing someone else. In other words, get rid of that pesky conscience.
Asimov would have written a short story where a Positronic Robot series had just been developed to the point where it could decide imprisonment counted as harm, and a human had directed it that it was acceptable as it offered a chance for the human to reform and become a better person. Susan would get involved over something, like the robot breaking the prisoner out when it became apparent the prisoner wasn't going to reform, or that he already had so the rest of his sentence was superfluous and so counted as harm.
Either way, putting someone in jail only automatically counts as harm at some particular level of mentation. Below that, the robot would assume that if the human got three squares and a cot, and better medical care than being on the run, there was no harm. Above that level, the robot would have to balance issues of human freedom with the harm a human might do to others exercising it. At still higher levels of understanding, the robot would have to consider how the human might harm himself exercising freedom. It's only an automatic violation of law 1 to a robot between the really dumb and the moderately smart levels, not to other robots.
Returning to the thread, the robots described are in the real world = really, really dumb category, too dumb to even apply the first law at all. That means a human would actually be fully responsible for any mistakes the robots made, but tools such as this let that human pretend not to be responsible for mistakes - that's what's really a 'bad thing' (tm) here.
Who is John Cabal?
Crazy, killing a police dog is a felony, but a police office killing someone else's dog is ... part of the job?
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
It was a fucked up experience when I ate it.
I was racked with guilt at the time. Everyone, excluding my father in law, told me I should get over it (me and him actually bonded in a weird way because of this). He has never antagonized me about it, and any time the subject is brought up in conversation he hasn't been the one to initiate it - and he never says anything critical.
In a culinary sense, it was good. In an existential sense, it was probably the most meaningful meal I have ever had.