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.'"

Comments

Still got glitches

[elashish14]

Apparently our fighting machines are still just in beta.

Re:Still got glitches

[Jurily]

Apparently our fighting machines are still just in beta.

Yeah, a few bugs here and there, but they're ready for production. I mean, it's not like they could kill anyone.

Re:Still got glitches

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

And it isn't as though the fleshy ones are without glitches of their own.

Re:Still got glitches

[geobeck]

The military would love to have Google as their contractor. Every project would remain in indefinite beta, but the public would inexplicably still trust them.

Okay, G-bots, go out there and Do No Evil.

Re:Still got glitches

[hairyfeet]

What is scary is you just know some general in the Pentagon is handing a weapons designer a picture of the T800 with no skin from Judgment Day and saying "See that? You just tell us how many bucks you need to crank us off a couple of thousand of those babies to start and we're in business!".

This whole rush to make killbots reminds me of an interview I saw with the director right after Blue Thunder came out in the 80s. He said 'I make this movie where I try to show exactly how bad giving such an incredibly deadly and intrusive weapon to law enforcement would be, and what happens? I got contacted by dozens of law enforcement groups wanting to know "How much do you want for her?" I saw the movie as a warning and they saw it as a sales pitch." and it is the same thing here. We all saw the devastation when the T800 was let loose upon mankind, and what did THEY see? "Damn! Would you look at the kill ratio of that bad boy! Gimmie 5000 of those puppies back then and I could have WON Vietnam! Let's see an IED stop that sucker! Somebody get me the guys that build them Predator drones on the horn.".

Somebody needs to save us from those in charge of "protecting" us when they see Blue Thunder and Judgment Day as weapon procurement ads.

Definition: Robot

[WED Fan]

Are radio controlled device robots? Or, is there a certain amount of autonomy that is necessary?

Re:Definition: Robot

[stoolpigeon]

I think that most of the currently deployed unmanned systems (at least in the case of the US military) do use some type of AI - though it is often working along side a human operator. Of course this is true even with manned systems now - especially in the case of aircraft.

  I like the sense-think-act paradigm to decide what is and isnâ(TM)t a robot. I think any man made device that has sensors, some kind of AI that helps it to decide what to do and then a method of acting on its environment is a robot.

A machine that is missing any one of the three is not a robot.

Some people insist upon mobility but I donâ(TM)t think that makes sense. I think the robots on assembly lines are robots even if they canâ(TM)t move around.

Re:Definition: Robot

[Culture20]

AWESOME! You just proved most of Congress are robots!

No no no, he said "Sense, Think, Act." Clearly one of the three is missing.

I, for one...

[Nyvhek]

...do not welcome those who would welcome our new robotic soldier overlords.

You have 30 seconds to comply

[spacefiddle]

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?!"

Daily Mail

[Colourspace]

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.

tremendous waste.

[nimbius]

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.

Re:tremendous waste.

[Hatta]

we need robots and machines that PREVENT war through simulation and complex analysis.

After all, the only winning move is not to play.

Re:tremendous waste.

[Daniel Dvorkin]

We have such machines already. The US DoD, and its counterparts in every industrialized country in the world, run extensive wargames and simulations for every possible scenario, and these days the results of these studies are pretty realistic. And you know what happens? When the people who want to fight the wars get numbers they don't like, they ignore the results and vilify the people who gave them realistic projections, and go to war anyway. Read up on Eric Shinseki for a recent example of this phenomenon, which has happened time and again throughout military history.

Re:tremendous waste.

[vertinox]

War is ultimately the only way to inflict a nations will upon another.

Unless both side has nukes.

The the only way to inflict your will is through smaller proxy wars and economics.

Of which both I suppose could also benefit from robotics.

Obligatory Simpsons' Quote

[tylersoze]

"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."

Berserk robot explosives gun

[CopaceticOpus]

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.

If I were developing the software . . .

[StefanJ]

. . . 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."

Hello?

[maugle]

Searching...
Are you still there?
There you are.
*BLAM*BLAM*BLAM*BLAM*BLAM*
Target lost...

Population doesn't matter?

[I'm_Original]

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.

Robot weapon vs. what we think of when we hear it

[jollyreaper]

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.

Re:Waldos

[geobeck]

The US Army predator drones are able to land on their own with no operator input and as such definitely count as robots.

In that respect, every large airliner manufactured since the 767 qualifies as a robot. On an average flight, the human pilot serves two purposes: Taxi driver to drive the plane from the terminal to the runway, and second redundant backup system. The autopilot does everything else.

Of course, in non-average circumstances, the pilot is called on to make decisions too complex for the 'robot' to handle.