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Robot Soldiers Are Already Being Deployed
destinyland writes "As a Rutgers philosopher discusses robot war scenarios, one science
magazine counts the ways robots are already being used in warfare,
including YouTube videos of six military robots in action.
There are up to 12,000 'robotic units' on the ground in Iraq, some dismantling landmines and roadside bombs, but
'a new generation of bots are designed to be fighting machines.' One bot can operate an M-16 rifle,
a machine gun, and a rocket launcher — and 250 people have already been killed by unmanned drones in Pakistan.
He also tells the story of a berserk robot explosives gun that killed nine people in South Africa due to a 'software glitch.'"
Apparently our fighting machines are still just in beta.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
None of the devices currently in use are robots. They're just military waldos.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Are radio controlled device robots? Or, is there a certain amount of autonomy that is necessary?
Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong fix.
...do not welcome those who would welcome our new robotic soldier overlords.
He also tells the story of a berserk robot explosives gun that killed nine people in South Africa due to a 'software glitch.'
"You call that a GLITCH?!"
That which does not kill us makes us... st
I, for one, would take a large pinch of salt with our UK tabloid overlords articles. They are the worst as they are the 'respectable' face of the UK newspapers which millions of middle class Englanders believe, but are the worst of the 'think of the children' brigade.
ive said it before and ill say it again. we dont need any more fighting robots or war robots. we need robots and machines that PREVENT war through simulation and complex analysis. robots and machines that can predict war, formulate resolutions to our current wars, and advance mankind as a civilization.
it does not matter if you take people out of the equation or "advance the science of the battlefield" to use a whitewash term from the pentagon. war is still a destructive force in which the net result is loss on all sides.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Coming soon to a battlefield near you, EMP weapons.
Aww, it's so nice of our military to train Skynet's warmachines for it.
"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots."
Any machine that fires a weapon needs to be built with an excessive number of safeguards. If something goes wrong, there should be several checks which shut off the weapon before it ever has a chance to fire. The fact that this machine would go berserk and fire its gun in a big circle shows that there was criminal neglect and carelessness by the developers, and whoever approved this design should probably be on trial.
Is anyone else sick of people calling these RC vehicles robots? When I hear robotic I think of a complex machince, not a RC car with a M-249 on it(although that is pretty sweet). I mean, we have reporters talking about robotic ethics when the vehicles make no independant decisions. Until these vehicles have the ability to make independant decisions(like the X-47) , lets nix the robot talk.
Fail safe systems fail by failing to fail safely.
Can we get a "-1 Wrong" moderation option?
. . . I would put in an easter egg that on random occasions causes the onboard speaker to broadcast stuff like "DIE CARBON UNITS!", "EXTERMINATE!" and "RESISTANCE IS USELESS."
I found the article to be annoyingly "Fear Robotic Death Machines, I Saw Them In A Movie".
I mean come on, using Terminator as a source? Sheesh, trash journalism with very few interesting facts.
We won't deploy an offensive robot that picks targets and fires, for at least 20 years. There just isn't enough information for a computer to process and pick targets accurately. Contrary to tin-foil hat skeptics, the Military has a huuuuuuge priority in protecting innocents, even more so since they've entered Iraq.
Defensive platforms however are different. We already have automated pillbox robots that can takeout trespassers, but that's just a much more humane mine field.
Our future is going to be robot platforms that are controlled by operators. Sure they might be automated in nearly every aspect required, but the target choosing will be decided by humans, for a very long time.
A sad side effect of this robotic warfare is going to be the loss of consequence to congress for beginning a war, however I believe it's an inevitable step we'll have to conquer, just as building the first wheel was.
Searching...
Are you still there?
There you are.
*BLAM*BLAM*BLAM*BLAM*BLAM*
Target lost...
I'm speculating here, but I don't think this is impossible, or even very far off.
We already have robots working in factories. If we ever get to the point where robots can be effectively used in war, we'll also be at the point where robots are capable of extracting resources. So, robots extracting resources, making robots, and fighting. Great, we've all seen this stuff in sci-fi, nothing new. But I've never encountered anyone talking about how this would affect world politics or the balance of power.
In todays world, the population of a country, as well as the will of the population, quality of military training, and natural resources all play a role in how well a country does in war. But if a country had robots as I just described, the primary factor in determining that country's power would be the natural resources available to it. If robots build robots you've got as many as you need, so the limiting factor is the raw materials and not food or population size or training etc.
So which countries have the raw materials? They win. For example, in this scenario Canada might be able to put up fight against the U.S. because Canada has alot of resources. As it stands now, Canada would get creamed.
This line of thought becomes more interesting when you think that the U.S. Military is developing robots as a way of making the U.S. army more effective, but maybe they are changing the equation so drastically that they might end up with much stronger enemies on more fronts.
Food for thought.
Technically speaking, a homing missile or torpedo could count as a robot weapon. We tend not to think that way because the gap between pressing the button and impact is short enough it's just like pulling the trigger on a gun and watching someone die.
Landmines and other boobyraps are, intellectually, about the same thing as an autonomous AI weapon -- they kill without human intervention, are impersonal and horrific. Yes, it's more frightening to imagine a T-800 coming after you and taking your leg off with a chainsaw but seriously, the results aren't that much different from a landmine.
When talking about the dangers of taking the human out of the loop, we've already got enough problems with humans in the loop. We took more kills from friendly fire than from the Iraqis in Gulf War 1. The more powerful the weapon, the easier the oops. I don't know how many top generals were accidentally killed by sentries back in the days of Rome -- kinda hard to accidentally run someone through with your gladius -- but just ask Stonewall Jackson how easy that sort of thing became with firearms. We'd never have gone through and killed an entire bunker of civilians by accident if our soldiers were doing the work with knives but that becomes as easy as an oops when dropping LGB's from bombers on the word of some faulty intel. Powerful weapons compound and magnify human errors.
Aside from the typical fear we have at the thought of impersonal killing machines taking us out, I think we have two other big fears -- 1) war becomes easier and less painful when robots are doing the dying and 2) a robot will never refuse a legal yet immoral order.
We've had bad wars historically but the 20th century really had them all beat. Technology allowed for total war, the bending of an entire nation's will to the obliteration of another. Ambitions grew bigger, power could be projected further, and the world became a smaller, more dangerous place. Battlefield robots will be a continuation of this trend.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
science delivers the good, whereas philosophers deliver nothing.
I am talking about modern philosopher, not philosophers from a time where that means educator and 'scientist'. Experimenter might be a better term there.
I was a philosophy major until I learned the number 1 thing said by philosophers:
"You want fries with that?"
maybe
"Do you want fries with that, or do you just think you want fries with that?"
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is definitely a revolution in military affairs, maybe more than nuclear weapons, because this technology will definitely be used by all sides. A lot of third world countries could probably almost be taken over right now by remote control, and with improved autonomous capabilities I can't see it being much of a problem in the future. The possibilities for proxy wars are really interesting -- what's to stop the U.S., China and Russia from waging remote-control robot wars for control of resource-rich countries in the third world? The natives with AK-47's won't be able to offer much resistance, and the political cost to the robotic powers could be minimal if the only casualties are machines. I think this is the brave new world we're moving into: robot police actions vs. terrorists in failed states and proxy robotic resource wars between the major powers. Then of course there's the possibility of a modern day Saruman, some power mad industrialist, mass-producing robots instead of Uruk-Hai and unleashing them on the world for his own nefarious purposes. It should be quite interesting to watch this technology develop -- it all reminds me of a real life anime movie or Philip K. Dick novel.