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Company Denies Its Robots Feed On the Dead
Back in January we covered the Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robot, or EATR. The EATR gets its energy by "engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like energy-harvesting behavior which is the equivalent of eating. It can find, ingest, and extract energy from biomass in the environment ..." So many news outlets picked up the story and ran it with titles alluding to the robot "eating flesh" or even "eating corpses" that a company spokesperson put out a press release saying, "This robot is strictly vegetarian." The statement says in part, "RTI's patent pending robotic system will be able to find, ingest and extract energy from biomass in the environment. Despite the far-reaching reports that this includes 'human bodies,' the public can be assured that the engine Cyclone has developed to power the EATR runs on fuel no scarier than twigs, grass clippings and wood chips — small, plant-based items for which RTI's robotic technology is designed to forage. Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI."
Desecration of the dead is a war crime under Article 15 of the Geneva Conventions, and is certainly not something sanctioned by DARPA, Cyclone or RTI
Doesn't say anything about dead "enemy combatants" though, does it?
Anyone care to guess
Talk about PR backfire...
this robot wouldn't be the first one to succumb to man-eating under extreme circumstances. the only way to be sure is to starve it, and lock it in a room with McCain.
weinersmith
> Company Denies Its Robots Feed On the Dead
Too bad, there could be use for such a robot in an epidemic scenario or on a battlefield where the many corpses laying around could cause a health hazard to the survivors ;-))))
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
...the flesh eating module is a premium upgrade. Only Cyberdyne Systems is experimenting with that at the present.
As such the robot will seek out enemy combatants who are not *quite* dead yet and feed on them...
I think there's a little typo. When they wrote Cyclone they actually meant Cylon.
Wonder when it will be available to groom lawns, chase dogs and patrol my house at night.
...is that I can still get the patent for corpse-eating robot?
THL phish sticks
Some head-line writer killed this company's product. It sucks, but it happens. Post this one to failblog.org/.
"If you want to know what happens to you when you die, go look at some dead stuff."
Never thought I'd see a post where that lame meme was apropo...
of media outlets giving a bad name to technology.
They're are the locusts, eating our crops.
You never expect irony, do you?
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What he's essentially saying is that it DOESN'T eat human bodies. However, that doesn't mean it COULDN'T.
engaging in biologically-inspired, organism-like, energy-harvesting behavior
Aww, its never as much fun after I spit-take and then read it over again...
-- Insert Microsoft Employees Joke Here --
Trust me - when gas starts reaching 5 bucks or more a gallon in the states, people will be SHOVELING relatives they don't like into the hoppers...
I spent all my time working on my emergency Zombie plan but now what i need is an Emergency robot plan.
Its not my fault, someone put a wall in my way.
Wait til they come out with the second variety of these and they start replicating themselves.
Fat generates more heat, which means more energy. The time to lose weight is now!
Desecrating the dead may be a crime, but aren't humans the only ones who can be help responsible for war crimes? If I carpet bomb an enemy military installation, can I be held responsible for a war crime if that installation had any dead bodies that get vaporized? Similarly, if I set loose this robot in a war one and program it to eat the dead (maybe only dead enemies), would I be held responsible for the actions of the robot? As someone above asked, who enforces this anyway? Can't they just make 'killing people' and 'destroying stuff' war crimes?
Cheers!
Atheist: Buddhist in a Prius
I'm sure we can change that.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
This thing SHOULD eat corpses. You know how much land is wasted in cemeteries and such? And how much cash in embalming and other funereal preparations? This could have saved thousands of acres and millions of dollars. Oh well, there's still a chance Japan will come through for it.
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
would that be modded "interesting".
I welcome our new vegan overlords.
Or do they just mean that many of recently deceased aren't sufficiently composted yet?
... tired and all shagged out from a long walk would be fair game.
[My apologies to Monty Python.]
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Isn't the chainsaw a bit much for just harvesting just "twigs, grass clippings and wood chips"?
You damn robots! Stay off my lawn!
"In prison you just have to shut your eyes and take it. Here you have to shut your eyes and give it."
if (feed.type == humanflesh) { // comment this line out at war time ....
}
The machines will enforce the conventions.
Vote for ED-209!
"ED-209. Not the brightest. But hard working, and Very Sincere!"
--Frank Miller
Sounds like he's a shoo-in for the red states!
Conclusion: Robots will not feed on the dead. They will much prefer the Living!
So, it is not a Soylent Green style food, then???
the robot only eats vegetarians. Pfew! That was a close one.
I studied it, and still don't give a shit. How's that for a philosophy?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Crap! You mean I'm going to have to clean the dead rats out of my Roomba by myself for the foreseeable future?
When can our household robots get omnivorous digesters without someone fretting over it being a war crime?
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
...PETA got to them.
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If it can't eat them after it kills them then why bother? It'll just leave a messy battlefield behind it, won't it?
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Technically, couldn't you shove a corpse in with the fuel of a steam engine and burn it? Does that make old-timey trains monstrous death-machines?
Hell, for that matter, what are "fossil fuels" but the corpses of plants and animals, anyway?
This thing would be scary if it actively hunted corpses not because of its ability to digest them, but rather its intent and design to do so. That you might could shove a body part into a robot out collecting twigs and grass clippings isn't really the designers' fault.
I always eat my greens :P
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Well, I wasn't attempting nihilism. Besides there is simply not enough data in my statement to precisely categorize what I said into belonging to particular philosophy.
I will expand on it if it helps you: I do not care what happens to dead bodies, for they are only containers for consciousness.
(never mind, fuck it, this conversation got boring.)
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
The Geneva conventions apply to uniformed soldiers fighting in declared wars between states. They specifically exclude "irregular" combatants who dress as civilians or are not acting on behalf of a state.
An argument can be made in favor of extending the protections of the Geneva conventions to cover "irregular" forces, but an argument could be made against it as well.
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It IS the apocalypse.
...this is going to work really well in the true desert regions. No fuel--no food. Now, quick! blow something up so the robot can refuel!
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
It just means the robots will have to eat them while they're still alive!
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Okay, I'll start...
The Geneva conventions apply to uniformed soldiers fighting in declared wars between states. They specifically exclude "irregular" combatants who dress as civilians or are not acting on behalf of a state.
Such as, say, people fighting on behalf of fellow citizens, against what they deem to be an oppressive power which attempts to dictate their actions from afar?
So obviously there's no direct parallel for the American Revolution today, but my point is that standards of war change -- and if we continue to believe that only "proper" war combatants should be protected, we're betraying principles which most of us believe to be more important than any government.
I always knew that I lived in an amazing time. I always knew that incredible things would be developed while I was alive. However, I expected these to be things like a reliable cure for cancer, widely available flying cars, and the reduction of disease and hunger in exotic locales where we could benefit from cheap, well-fed labor.
Never did I imagine that we would instead focus on robots that do not, but theoretically could, eat people as fuel.
Take it to the limit, everybody to the limit, come on, everybody fhqwhgads.
Geneva Conventions cover eating enemies alive?
OK, but there's idealism, and then there's the actual treaty that many nations agreed to. Agreed to not because of morality, but because eachthought it would server their self interest to do so. That treaty mostly protects uniformed soldiers under government command, for good historical reasons. And the only punishment for not complying with the treaty is that it will no longer protect your side, so extending its protections to those who don't comply with it destroys the very valuable protections it does offer.
Perhaps a new treaty would be better, and perhaps you could get the world powers to sign tht treaty, and perhaps monkeys will fly out of my butt and serve as moderators for the process.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
So obviously there's no direct parallel for the American Revolution today, but my point is that standards of war change -- and if we continue to believe that only "proper" war combatants should be protected, we're betraying principles which most of us believe to be more important than any government.
On the other hand, the founding fathers were very clear that they were now a new state. Of course, the goal is to know who to hold accountable for following the rules of the Geneva Convention.
This doesn't mean we should violate our common sense of human decency, but we are not held accountable to the letter of the Geneva Convention because it only works if both parties follow the rules.
Write your representatives! Repeal the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics!
Irregular combatants, terrorists and random extremist militias should be protected, just not by the Geneva conventions.
I'm struggling to come up with a car analogy here, but basically trying to shoe-horn them into a law/treaty that wasn't created with them in mind makes little sense when there are already other laws which would protect them in this country.
As far as what happens outside of the country, I think the ballot box is the best, maybe only, answer to that.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
General principles are great, and I'm in favor of them. However, that is not the same thing as the obligations spelled out in a treaty. It's like saying that the speed limit in Maryland has something to do with driving in England.
And it should be noted both that the Continental army was in fact uniformed, and fought well before the Geneva conventions were written.
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'It's people!'
Don't fall for it! This just means they will eat the living!
But that's all the more reason to treat the other side's forces properly. If both sides are torturing prisoners, committing attrocities on its prisoners, leaving wounded soldiers untended, etc, then neither side will give up because it would be better to fight to the death than to fall into enemy hands. If one side is kind to its prisoners, then the enemy is more likely to surrender. Better lying in a hospital bed with clean sheets and proper food, than to be tied to a post and used as a knife throwing target, or being tied hand and foot and dragged back and forth through a field to trip any mines. Thus by showing kindness to the enemy, they are more willing to give up when overwhelmed or wounded. This saves your own soldiers.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
I'm surprised Im the first to call you out on this. Under the Geneva Conventions ANYONE in enemy hands is entitled to protection as either a prisoner of war under the third convention, or as a civilian under the fourth convention, including your so-called "irregular forces."
"Article 5 specifies that prisoners of war (as defined in article 4) are protected from the time of their capture until their final repatriation. It also specifies that when there is any doubt whether a combatant belongs to the categories in article 4, they should be treated as such until their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."
Also of note:
"Any person who has taken part in hostilities, who is not entitled to prisonerofwar status and who does not benefit from more favourable treatment in accordance with the Fourth Convention shall have the right at all times to the protection of Article 75 of this Protocol. In occupied territory, any such person, unless he is held as a spy, shall also be entitled, notwithstanding Article 5 of the Fourth Convention, to his rights of communication under that Convention."
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Dear future generation,
I admit, it was me. It was all a joke, you know... In hindsight, it might not have been wise to confront the slashdot crowd with the vision of a forced breeding program, but honestly, I didn't realize what I had done until they started to mod me "Insightful".
So here you have it, you now know the truth. I'm sorry you have to live your life as cattle.
Sincerely,
Mr2Cents.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
So obviously there's no direct parallel for the American Revolution today, but my point is that standards of war change -- and if we continue to believe that only "proper" war combatants should be protected, we're betraying principles which most of us believe to be more important than any government.
But this principle hasn't changed. In the formulation of the Geneva Conventions they gave much thought to the place of partisans or militias, who might not be uniformed. If they are under the common command of the uniformed army, if they are identifiable from a distance, and if they carry their arms openly, among other things, then they are protected. People who mix in with civilian and drop a grenade in a jeep are purposely not protected by the Geneva Conventions. These principles were identical during the American revolution. American civilians shooting guns at British authorities before the Declaration of Independence would appropriately be arrested and tried as a criminal. After the Declaration of Independence and the establishment of an army and organization of militiamen under its command, the British (if they were behaving appropriately) treated prisoners with the courtesies due from the law of war, and not as criminals. However, a spy or a sabateur would be tried and executed, just as under the Geneva Conventions.
These are very important principles, as these are the structures that prevent wars from devolving into genocides, as such "unprotected" tactics lead to soldiers' fear of civilians, which in turn leads to the massacres of civilians. It is not hard to find examples of this phenomenon, and it is precisely the purpose of the Geneva Conventions to avoid such developments.
But the circumstances you're describing aren't what the Geneva Convention set out to do. The Geneva Convention is an agreement between states: "We'll treat your soldiers and civilians respectfully (when not trying to kill them in 'fair' ways) if you do the same to ours." But the "enemy combatants" of Al Qaeda don't want to abide by such rules, and instead desecrate the bodies of western soldiers and behead civilians on camera. So, the Geneva Convention doesn't apply to them by definition. They didn't sign the agreement, they're not uniformed soldiers serving in a regular state army with a chain of command, and they have no reason to abide by its terms.
Since they don't, there's good reason for the US to not afford those protections to irregular forces. For example, the GC spells out methods by which soldiers may surrender. You throw down your arms, wave your white flag, and it's a war crime if the other soldiers don't accept your surrender and give you food, shelter, and medical care. Likewise, it's a war crime to wave your white flag, and then when the other guys get close to take you prisoner, send children strapped with bombs to blow them up. But the "irregular forces" we're talking about do just that. So what do you do in that situation, when you're the soldier who has to take an insurgent's fake surrender? Who knows, because the situation isn't covered by the GC.
There should be an international agreement on the treatment and handling of irregular forces like Al Qaeda and Iraqi insurgents, but there isn't. The GC simply does not address dealing with people in these circumstances. The GC would be a good jumping-off point for new international law, but for the US to unilaterally apply the GC to circumstances it doesn't cover doesn't make much sense. There's nothing wrong with the GC; it's just not applicable in these kinds of conflicts.
We don't have a state-run media we have a media-run state.
Dumb robot. Meat is high in energy value. What a waste to ignore that biomass.
The Geneva conventions apply to uniformed soldiers fighting in declared wars between states. They specifically exclude "irregular" combatants who dress as civilians or are not acting on behalf of a state.
Yeah, but all the countries that could fight a declared war are pretty much allied.
I don't foresee the US, UK, Russian, and China duking it out any time soon; do you?
Irregular combatants are the norm in many places, like Iraq.
I retract my statement in the parent post that there is ambiguity where a trial of a prisoner of war should take place, insofar as that prisoner of war is a lawful enemy combatant, and protected by the Geneva Convention. I was just reading through it and was shocked to find this (emphasis added):
The granting of Habeas to civil courts is a flat-out violation of the Geneva Convention. Did the Justice Department miss this?! Or has it not been brought up because it only applies to lawful enemy combatants?
I don't find the idea of Vegan Energetically Autonomous Tactical Robots, or VEATRs (Granola Terminators) much more reassuring, but thanks for trying.
The runcible rhythm of ravenous raisins rolled through the rookery rambling and raving.
The robot has a chainsaw for exactly that purpose. It's right in the diagram.
Skynet reports that the Governor of California will be releasing large numbers of flesh eating robots to do menial jobs at the California DMV. This will resolve the long lines and keep services moving along, as well as serve as an exercise program for state employees. When asked about this the Governor was quoted "Da Copper Tops, Ea, De Empoyees will be Modivated to wurk much hader now."
Ross Youngblood
May it eat alive people then?
That's true, of course. No doubt that's wht we give Gitmo prisoners free copies of the Koran and Harry Potter books, and otherwise treat them better than the average American POW has been treated by our enemies (I believe it's the case that more media personalities have had themselves waterboarded "to see how bad it really is" than America has waterboarded enemy combatants). However, you still want to leave a gap between how you treat prisoners of opponents who don't follow the treaty, and those who do, since American POWs have been used as human mine detectors, burned alive, tortured extensively, etc, in my lifetime.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Am I the only one one imagining a zombie robots movie? Zombie transformers maybe...
On the other hand, the founding fathers were very clear that they were now a new state.
But you do realise that by modern post-9/11 standards, they'd have been considered terrorists by the Brits, right?
The Geneva conventions apply to uniformed soldiers fighting in declared wars between states. They specifically exclude "irregular" combatants who dress as civilians or are not acting on behalf of a state.
Irregular combatants dessing as civilians were, among western nations, usually spies. And enemy spies in your country were treated as criminals and tried according to the laws of your land, which were usually quite severe when it came to spying, but they still had the same rights that any criminal has. A fair trial, for example.
They problem with the Gitmo prisoners is that they were not only denied rights as PoWs, but also rights as criminals or even human beings. Torture is not just forbidden by the Geneva Convention, it's also against the Declaration of Human Rights.
Had the US treated them as criminals and given them a lawyer and a fair trial, most people wouldn't have complained. Except lawyers of course, because many of the Gitmo prisoners were arrested on foreign soil and had never even set foot in the US, so they should have been tried according to the laws of the countries where they lived or had been arrested.
But at least they would have had some rights. The problem is that the US specifically created and exploited a loop hole in order to deny people their rights, and that's fundamentally totalitarian and tyrannical, and definitely something that people should protest against. Loudly and, if necessary, violently.
Although I suppose that could still leave unpleasant battlefield moments open.
It would surprise me if modifications don't include something like a pitcher plant to trap insects. Lot of calories in meat.
The stop harping on about the Geneva Conventions which obviously do not apply and just talk directly about human rights.
"Company denies its robots feed on the dead". Fun times. Ah, well -- they say there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Kythe
And if you believe that everyone not waving a flag, wearing a uniform, and singing their national anthem is a civilian, you're leaving terrorists a wide avenue of options in which to operate and blaming the victims of terrorism for the terrorists' actions.
Can't we be against imperialism and terrorism at the same time?