Robotics Prof Fears Rise of Military Robots

An anonymous reader writes "Interesting video interview on silicon.com with Sheffield University's Noel Sharkey, professor of AI & robotics. The white-haired prof talks state-of-the-robot-nation — discussing the most impressive robots currently clanking about on two-legs (hello Asimo) and who's doing the most interesting things in UK robotics research (something involving crickets apparently). He also voices concerns about military use of robots — suggesting it won't be long before armies are sending out fully autonomous killing machines."

Comments

skynet

[el_tedward]

okay, where's the tag?

"Friendly AI"

[Baldrson]

This is one of the things that makes me think the concern about "friendly AI" is blown out of proportion. The problem isn't making sure teh AI's are "friendly" -- its making sure the NI (natural intelligence) owners of the AI's are "friendly".

If half the effort spent on "friendly AI" were spent on examining the ownership of AI's, there might be some hope.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[Ethanol-fueled]

Indiscriminately fire at anything that moves. Isn't that Blackwater's* job?

* er, Xe Services LLC.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[Ethanol-fueled]

That depends on whether they started using steroids before or after they joined Blackwater.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[jollyreaper]

This is one of the things that makes me think the concern about "friendly AI" is blown out of proportion. The problem isn't making sure teh AI's are "friendly" -- its making sure the NI (natural intelligence) owners of the AI's are "friendly".
If half the effort spent on "friendly AI" were spent on examining the ownership of AI's, there might be some hope.

That's just it -- human nature never changes. The general can order genocide but it's up to the soldiers to carry it out. The My Lai Massacre was stopped by a helicopter pilot who put his bird between the civilians and "told his crew that if the U.S. soldiers shot at the Vietnamese while he was trying to get them out of the bunker that they were to open fire at these soldiers."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

Robots aren't really the issue -- distancing humans from killing is the problem. Not many of us could kill another human being with our bare hands. A knife might make the task easier in the doing but does nothing to ease the psychological horror of it. Guns let you do it at a distance. You don't even have to touch the guy. And buttons make it easier still. It's like you're not even responsible. You could convince young men to fly bombers over enemy cities and rain down incendiaries but I don't think you could convince many of them to kill even one of those civilians with a gun, let alone a knife.

This is the strange distinction we make where we find one form of killing a horrible thing, a war crime, terrorism, and another form of killing is a regrettable accident but there's really no blame to be assigned. A suicide bomber walks into a pizzeria and blows himself up, we lose our minds. An Air Force bomber drops an LGB in a bunker filled with civilians instead of top brass, shit happens. We honestly believe there's a distinction between the two. "Americans didn't set out to kill civilians" war hawks will huff. Yes, but they're still dead, aren't they?

Combat robots are simply continuing this process. Right now there is still a man in the loop to order the attack. Hamas kills Israeli targets with suicide bombs, Israelis deliver high explosives via missile into apartment blocks filled with civilians. They're using American-manufactured anti-tank missiles. I think they're still using TOW. Predator drones use hellfires and their operators are sitting in the continental US while Israeli pilots are a few miles away from the target inside their choppers but really, what's the difference? And what happens when drones are given the authority to engage targets on their own? A soldier with a gun can at least see what he's shooting at. Those in the artillery corps are firing their shells off into the unseen distance and have no idea who they're killing. Not that much different from laying land mines, indiscriminate killing. Psychologically no different from what it would be to set a robot on patrol mode, fire-at-will.

If one extrapolates a little further, the problem of the droid army is similar to that of the tradition of unpopular leaders using corps of foreign mercenaries to protect them from the wrath of the people. The mercenaries did not speak the language, did not know the customs, and were counted as immune to palace intrigues. They could be used against the people for they would not the sympathy for fellow countrymen that a native force might feel. What are droids being used for? Only the people operating them could say for sure. Welcome to the age of the push-button assassination.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[Daniel Dvorkin]

Of course, for thousands of years of recorded history, people did kill each other en masse at arm's length. Alexander's soldiers may have been more honest about what they were doing than somebody today sitting in a bunker pressing a button and killing people on the other side of the globe, but they were no less bloodthirsty. So I don't think you can blame the modern willingness to kill on the impartiality created by modern military technology, because the modern willingness to kill looks remarkably like the ancient willingness to kill, just with different tools.

OTOH, I agree with you completely about the absurdity of calling some methods of killing heroic and others evil. Dead is dead.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[S77IM]

Shouldn't this story have an "ED-209" tag?

I agree with you that distancing humans from killing is big a problem. We have that problem now with cruise missiles, cluster bombs, nuke-from-orbit, etc.

But accidental death from robots run amok is not a pleasant thought either. The whole point of an AUTOMATED system is that it runs without a human driving it. This leads to a potential -- however slim -- that the system starts killing people without permission.

It sucks that we kill each other deliberately. Let's not create more opportunities for accidents.

  -- 77IM, "Guns don't kill people, robot guns kill people."

Re:"Friendly AI"

[stdarg]

We honestly believe there's a distinction between the two. "Americans didn't set out to kill civilians" war hawks will huff. Yes, but they're still dead, aren't they?

Are you serious? So to take a personal example, say somebody murdered your mother. How would you want that person punished? Many people would call for the death penalty. Now what if someone killed your mother completely by accident... say your mom ran a red light and got hit by someone. She's still dead, isn't she?

Re:"Friendly AI"

[AJWM]

Heck, for thousands of years people have been killing each other with autonomous -- although not intelligent -- devices. The projectile from a trebuchet or ballista can't be recalled or turned off once it's on its way. And the destructive force of long range munitions has only gotten greater since.

To the extent that battlefield robots can do a better job of telling the combatants from the non-combatants than can lobbed rocks or bombs, then all the better.

Just so long as somebody has an "off" switch.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[Shihar]

As dark as the potential for drones can be, I think it actually has the chance to make war a far less indiscriminate and bloody thing.

Right now, if a square of Marines gets fired on, they can return fire. A square of marines has the firepower to flatten a village. Give them access to artillery or air support, and they can literally level a city. In other words, whenever you have a squad of supported marines fight, you are having a group of kids (and they are just kids) holding their finger over enough firepower to take out a small army. Their job is to use as little as that firepower as humanly possible. You might be able to level every building in a half mile radius, but you are not supposed to. When it comes to a firefight though, especially a desperate firefight where soldiers have their lives on the line, they, like most humans, choose life over death, and if that means flattening an entire apartment building to get at one sniper, they do it and hope that no one else was inside. Generally speaking, unless a soldier walks up to a civilian and splatters their brains on the floor, they are let off free. It is war, your life is on the line, you take your risks and respond in the best way possible. If a civilian gets accidentally whacked, that is sad but acceptable. Most soldiers develop a pretty thick "us vs them" mentality that see civilians if not the enemy, as hostile terrain, especially in a guerrilla war.

Drones offer up another possibility. It is true, you can order a drone army to go out and kill civilians and it is probably easier to get a soldier to do it. That said, if you policy is civilian murdering, a nation like the US doesn't need to use drones. You can handily exterminate all life through impersonally aerial bombing. What drones offer is more control over the rules of war. Rules mean little when you are surrounded by gunfire. You do what you have to do to survive. On the other hand, when you are sitting in the US with a military lawyer over one shoulder, a commander over the other, and and every single second and action you take is getting recorded, rules are a lot more enforceable. If the rules call on you to die before you level an apartment complex just to get at one sniper, a drone can simply die. A soldier generally wont.

With drones, you have complete accountability for your actions. You can always go to command before doing something. You never need to make snap judgments. Hell, you can call a damned military lawyer over and get his take on the rules of engagement. Further, every bloody thing you do is being recorded, so if you decide to start murdering civilians you will be caught and tried.

On the balance, I think drones are going to lessen the lives lost. The few potential abuses are pointless to worry about. If someone wants to exterminate another people indiscriminately, you can do it the cheap old fashion way of aerial bombardment. On the other hand, if you are an army that wants to enforce ironclad rules of engagement, drones ensure there is never an excuse for fucking up, and that fuckups get caught.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[tsm_sf]

I'm not really worried. I'm sure we'll hear about some 'bot wiping out it's own platoon in the next decade, and that will be the end of semi-autonomous killbots.

In fact, I'd be very surprised if this didn't happen in the next ten years. Armed robots are a great idea in that they'd cost less than a fully trained human and are more easily repairable. It's a natural way to go for the military. I also know enough about software development to see that a catastrophic failure is fairly likely, and that the idiot-proof failsafe they'll set up will turn out not to be and won't, respectively.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[joe_frisch]

I think a lot will depend on the extent to which the robot operator is held responsible for the semi-autonomous robot's actions. If the human is completely responsible, it might make ware less deadly. If the human can use the excuse "well the automatic targeting system mistakenly identified the 5 year old with a tricycle as an enemy robot - its a terrible shame, we need to update the recognition system" - then you have problems.

  There is a tendency for large organizations to avoid placing blame on any particular person - so the military might tend to deflect blame from the human operator. In fact the blame IS unclear - is it the operator, or one of the possibly thousands of programmers involved in the pattern recognition algorithms in the robot?

Re:"Friendly AI"

[mbone]

Well, suppose your Mom was at a restaurant having dinner, and it got blown up, killing her and most of the rest of the clientele, and you learned that the restaurant was bombed without warning because a "high value target" was supposed to have been there, but wasn't. (This has happened, and it was no accident.) I assume, based on the above, you would feel that "them's the breaks," but I can assure you that many people would conclude that the people dropping the bombs don't really care much as to whether civilians were killed or not, and you don't have to dig very deep to learn that in reality many of the people at the receiving end of such incidents do indeed feel that the people behind the bombs deserve punishment.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[CopaceticOpus]

Yes, it will happen. No, it won't stop development. Depending what you mean by autonomous, it may have already happened.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[Eivind]

Agreed. Suffering own losses is pretty much the only thing that in practice limits the willingness of some leaders to wage war. It doesn't limit it all that much either, truth be told. But the endless rows of young american men coming home horisontally, DID play a major role in turning opinion in cases like the Vietnam War, and I think it'll do the same in Afghanistan and Iraq. The american public tire of sacrificing an endless row of their young, for issues and countries they don't really care -that- much about.

Already, technological differences means that the US can wage war with very low body-counts. Around 4500 US soldiers has been killed in Iraq, which compares favourably with the ~100K Iraqis who's been killed. (a 1:20 ratio, aproximately). I do not think the US public would've accepted the war (many of them don't accept it, even now) if the ratio to be expected had been closer to 1:1.

I can't help but wonder how many wars the next Bush will choose to engage in, if it can be done with a 1:100 ratio, or a 1:1000, or a 1:5000. If you could overthrow a major government, while losing -20- of your own men, would the reluctance to do so be smaller ? I think it would.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[shervinemami]

Its true that military robots & technology are trying to be used to make warfare more "clean", so that the desired targets can be bombed with the least damage to civilians. That is good, atleast in theory, BUT at the end of the day, it is still all going to be controlled by the military leaders that don't necessarily know who are the civilians and who are the targets.

I have actually worked on a military robot for intended deployment in Iraq, and our military officer explained that when you are in a place like Iraq, you don't know who the enemy is and who the civilians are, because even if you see a 5yr old girl with her innocent looking grandmother and you ignore or help them, they are just as likely to try to secretly attack you as someone dressed in military uniform. So the US military in Iraq has to basically assume everyone that isn't a US soldier might be the enemy and therefore they can convince themselves that the ethical thing to do is kill anyone they see that they aren't completely sure is on their side.

So it doesn't matter whether the soldiers have basic weapons or latest military robots, they are still in the mind-set that any civilian can be considered part of the enemy's military.

The main advantage of military robots to the USA is that the countries that USA invades will be much poorer & less advanced countries than USA, so the enemy wont be able to make use of cutting-edge military technology compared to America.

If you don't believe me, put it this way: if Iraq had just as many military soldiers & robots fighting in USA as USA has in Iraq, do you still think people would see this the same way? The "Iraq War" and the "Afghanistan War" aren't wars, they are one-sided invasions, so its very different than if those countries were actually bombing America on a daily basis.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[ultranova]

That's just it -- human nature never changes. The general can order genocide but it's up to the soldiers to carry it out. The My Lai Massacre was stopped by a helicopter pilot who put his bird between the civilians and "told his crew that if the U.S. soldiers shot at the Vietnamese while he was trying to get them out of the bunker that they were to open fire at these soldiers."

Yes. On the other hand, the reason that My Lai happened in the first place is that people had been under constant stress and simply snapped. Had the entire war been fought with robotic soldiers, and instead of body bags only scrap metal had been sent back home, would the general had ordered a genocide? I doubt it, for there would have been no emotional involvement, and no stress and bottled-up hatred.

Finally, if you're a soldier patrolling a conquered city, and you see someone seemingly unarmed running towards you, it could be a suicide bomber about to blow you up, or it could simply be someone running. You risk killing an innocent or you risk getting killed. On the other hand, if the patrol is robotic, it can simply wait; if the robot is blown up, no big deal, the factory has already built three new ones to replace it by the time the last pieces hit the ground, so you can err on the side of not shooting unless it's really obvious it's an enemy.

Robot infantry removes human emotions from the war, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[jollyreaper]

Of course, for thousands of years of recorded history, people did kill each other en masse at arm's length. Alexander's soldiers may have been more honest about what they were doing than somebody today sitting in a bunker pressing a button and killing people on the other side of the globe, but they were no less bloodthirsty. So I don't think you can blame the modern willingness to kill on the impartiality created by modern military technology, because the modern willingness to kill looks remarkably like the ancient willingness to kill, just with different tools.

Part of it is cultural conditioning. People who grow up in times of war like that are more willing to do the whole rape and pillage thing. But just look at the problem modern armies have had conditioning soldiers to shoot to kill. The statistics come from WWI, II, Korea, and Vietnam. Something like one in ten soldiers were shooting for effect when their lives weren't immediately in danger. Not sure exactly how this was determined but the whole kill drill done in boot camp is about breaking that resistance until shooting becomes automatic. The studies said it became 100% by Vietnam.

There's a desensitization that comes with all of this, of course. Take a normal, sane, caring 18-yr old and put him in a fucked situation like Iraq. The first month in, he's not wanting to hurt civilians. After he loses his best friend to a car bomb driven by what looked like "civilians" he's willing to kill all the motherfucking motherfuckers and doesn't care about arguments of guilt or innocence. They're local, they're all guilty. Of course, there's also the guys who shoot up a car they think is running the blockade only to find out it was just a confused father with his family and here's the kids dripping life into the street. That's gonna stick with those guys for the rest of their lives. Might even cause them to eat a bullet.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[Idiomatick]

We kill less now than we did back then... even with the ease of doing so we have today, thats a good thing.

Re:"Friendly AI"

[Toze]

Actually, modern willingness to kill is significantly different than ancient willingness to kill. Rates of death in combat didn't exceed 10% until the Napoleonic wars, and didn't reach 50% until the World Wars. David Grossman wrote a couple of books (On Killing, and On Combat) explaining the psychological tools used to increase a soldier's willingness to kill (and ability to avoid or recover from the severe psychological trauma caused by killing). Physical distance is precisely one of those methods, as is technological distance (button-pushing) and psychological distance (seeing the enemy as inhuman). The tendency of a nation or its troops to refer to the enemy in dehumanizing terms (raus, hun, sand nigger) is one example of the soldier's attempt to distance himself from the awareness that he's killing another human being. Modern combat training involves a lot of methods (human-shaped targets, training instinctive reaction, training obedience to orders) meant to create a buffer between the soldier and "the enemy."

If you read the "historical" accounts of most battles, you'll believe that 5,000,000 Persian soldiers invaded ancient Greece, and most of them died. Archeology suggests the numbers were more like 1,000,000 people at most, 100,000 of which at most were combat troops, and only 10,000 of them died before they went back home. War history where we have each sides' records of dead and wounded, and kills attributed to their own soldiers, show that most nations will significantly overestimate how many people they killed. Before Napoleon, despite the bloody accounts of even medieval battles, way more people would die from dysentery than sword wounds.

Today's soldiers are not any more bloodthirsty than Alexander's soldiers were, but they have tools that are much more effective, and significantly psychologically easier for them to use. The two benefits of robot soldiers are that, first, it will reduce the number of human beings on "our side" who are put in harm's way, and second, that it will be considerably easier for someone to push the button marked "kill" if it looks more like Command & Conquer than Apocalypse Now. We can see attrition rates of 80 or 90% today because we've made it psychologically and technically easy enough to kill 1,000 people with the push of one button. The danger, for example, of nukes in the cold war was not that nukes were destructive (though they were), but that they were easy to use. Stalin killed way more people by working them to death than died in Hiroshima- but in Hiroshima they only had to push a button. Killer robots are a lot like that. Easy to use.

Once again, The Simpsons is correct!

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Secret_War_of_Lisa_Simpson

"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."

If You Watch the Whole Video

[eldavojohn]

Am I the only one who picked up on his visual cues that indicate this is the first time he's been out of his lab in over a year? Look at how tired and emaciated he is. Also, I think there's bar code tattoo on his inner arm that -- if you lift the image and scan it -- reads "HUMAN 00001" which is kind of disconcerting. The part at the end where he holds up the captcha that reads "HELP, PLEASE HELP ME" was a dead giveaway. While his voice and text was overly positive towards the proliferation of his "sleek metal masters" I believe his body language indicated otherwise.

Re:If You Watch the Whole Video

[Captain Hook]

there's bar code tattoo on his inner arm that -- if you lift the image and scan it -- reads "HUMAN 00001" which is kind of disconcerting.

Disconcerting indeed since they apperently don't see the need for more than 99,999 humans worldwide. Presumably they want to keep a few of us alive to do the jobs which no self-respecting robot would ever want to do.

Re:Terminator LOL

[dangitman]

Yes, the future is either going to be biologically engineered disaster of zombies, or robots that get programmed for peace keeping by killing all humans.

Why the false dichotomy? It could just as likely be zombie robots, or robot zombies.

Re:No worries

[Koby77]

I'm pretty confident that there will be more budgeting for this sort of thing in the future though. If you look at the costs of a military operation, it's huge. There's a lot of money which can be saved by switching to robots. Not so for other areas such as manufacturing. When you can move your manufacturing to a 3rd world country and have $2 per day workers, there isn't much money to be saved by introducing a robot into the process. Inevitably, the global military R&D budget will continue to eclipse all other robotics research spending. Unless some other unforeseen robotics application which can save boatloads of money is realized, I think it's just a matter of simple economics that the future control of robots will be by the military industry.

Good Idea

[outsider007]

Automating the death panel process is a good way to save taxpayers money.
Also since robots eat old people's medicine for food, they will basically be self-powered.

Building artificially intelligent killing machines

[meldroc]

What could possibly go wrong? I mean, we've had a whole 150,000 years since the last time we built Cylons and they rebelled, attempting genocide against the human race. Surely it can't happen again...

Electromagnetic Pulse, anyone?

[Kozz]

What kind of expense would be required to effectively shield these armies of robots from strong EMP? Or would an EMP be impractical or ineffective? Inquiring minds want to know.

Re:Electromagnetic Pulse, anyone?

[Shihar]

If you are lobbing EMP weapons at each other, you are already fucked and fighting WW3. Duck and cover. Emp blasts have very small rangers. With the amount of effort it takes to make a pulse big enough to fry a robot, you might as well just drop a normal bomb on their head and do it the old fashion way. The only time this isn't true is if you start lobbing neutron bombs and nukes. Those are probably worth the price... but if you are lobbing around nukes, you are already completely fucked and fighting the kind of war where cities get vaporized and civilizations collapse.

For your run of the mill insurgent, I am pretty sure your best solution is the old fashion one... explosives.

Re:Electromagnetic Pulse, anyone?

[aXis100]

A focussed EM beam would work well though - eg a high gain microwave or radio waveguide could cause serious disruption.

Re:Fully autonomous killing machines

[Mr. Freeman]

"Humans will always be better than machines at killing humans (unfortunately), machines can only simulate our thinking..."

I disagree. What robots lack up for in creativity they make up for in the ability to withstand orders of magnitude more damage than humans. I mean, blow a robot's leg clean off and its weapon systems still work. It doesn't pass out from blood loss or pain. Put a few bullets though it and chances are it's still going to be up and running. No human can do that.

They won't be creative, but everything is going to be directed by human commanders located in a semi-remote facility, so it's a non-issue. Any new threat will be adapted to by the humans controlling the robots.

Furthermore, humans need to be creative to avoid getting killed. That really isn't an issue with robots. One dead soldier is a very bad thing, 50 dead robots isn't good but no one is going to lose any sleep over it. If you kill half of a human squad, they're probably not going to advance any further. Wipe out half a fleet of robotic killing machines and they'll keep marching right on in.

This isn't a hopeful future

[Whuffo]

There's lots of talk here about how machines are not as "good" as humans. That is certainly true on an overall basis - but for specific well defined tasks, a machine can outperform a human by an order of magnitude or more.

Recognize a human being by IR? No problem. Aim a weapon at the head? No problem. Bang, one shot and one kill. Repeat times N where N is the size of the machine's ammo supply or the number of targets (whichever is less). The whole cycle would take a fraction of a second and if you were one of the targets you'd probably be dead before you discovered your peril. The fact that such machines are well within our capability to mass produce right now isn't what scares me - it's the sad fact that there are people in high places that think that doing this would be a good idea.

There are unwritten rules to wars - the general concept is duke it out until one side or the other gives up or can't continue. This "agreement" would break down when the killbots started mowing down the enemy and things would get very ugly in a hurry. Do you think nukes are the "big scary?" Wait until you see what's coming if we head down this path.

Dystopia is coming

[TheTapani]

Another talk on the same topic. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/pw_singer_on_robots_of_war.html

Military robots are the future of war. We will see robot armies fighting each other. Consider what kind of surveillance state you can create by millions of robotic insects, using swarm intelligence / smart dust to report on everyone.

Maybe mankind ends up like in matrix, but with opposing robot armies trying to kill the last survivors from the superpowers, who are hiding deep down underground, kept alive by fading nuclear reactors...

Running spider mines

[DigiShaman]

Won't be long before we (any nation really) has robotic spider mines. Imagine them communicating with each other in pack and relaying GPS location data. If one finds a target, they start to zero in on the victim. Imagine being out in the field and seeing one of these bastards running along and then hopping on to your fellow soldier just prior to detonation.

Don't know about the rest of you, but "Oh fuck" would be the last thing going through my mind after seeing something like that.

Re:Running spider mines

[Animats]

Imagine them communicating with each other in pack and relaying GPS location data. If one finds a target, they start to zero in on the victim.

Reality: DARPA funded work on that in 1997. Sandia made it work. The Sandia concept turned out not to be too useful militarily, but paved the way for the Precision Urban Hopper..

Re:Running spider mines

[DigiShaman]

1997? Damn! I had no idea. I can only imagine what they've got now. Scary stuff I'm sure. BTW, thanks for the info.

And

[Weaselmancer]

Mechanized soldiers can be dangerous, too.
Consider the following scenario.

In the early morning of December 7, 2041, one million mechanized soldiers arise from the receding tide and onto the shores of China. The robots march relentlessly westward, killing all Chinese soldiers in their path. The final destination is Tibet.

Fortunately, the Chinese have had state sponsored hackers for decades now. It was a simple matter for these hardened pros to return the bots to their creators, with orders to kill.

Something involving crickets - or krikkits?

[jools33]

This must be a typo - I'm sure UK robotic scientists are investigating krikkits and their imminent return to collect the ashes.

What do they call this type of robot?

[CrazyJim1]

This robot is: A humanoid robot controlled entirely by the movements and actions of a live person. I know we don't have the technology for a robot to keep its balance well enough on two legs, but we are there or at least close for controlling a skeleton in 3d. What would a robot like this be called? I'm sure I'm not the first to think about it, so I figure there has to be a name for it.

3rd Armored Corps commander wants killbots

[Animats]

The US military wants robots. More robots. Robots that kill. Now.

Read Failure To Field The Right Robots Costs Lives, General Says. Lt. General Rick Lynch, commander of the U.S. Army's 3rd Armored Corps, wants autonomous killbots. His corps lost 155 soldiers in Iraq, and he claims that 80% of them would have been saved if the right kind of robots were deployed. On watching "hotspots" for enemy activity: "Robots can take the soldiers' places. They can continuously keep watch on an area, and if nefarious activity is spotted, we can take appropriate action. ... We can kill those bastards before they plant the IEDs"

This is a combat general in charge of a major Army command making it happen.

What?

[Tibia1]

The most society changing robot on the rise is the... vacuum cleaner? Was that a joke?

I have doubts

[Rothron the Wise]

I suspect it will be too easy to create effective countermeasures to make military robots a real threat. After all since the robots are identical the same countermeasure will be effective for all of them. They will also have simple sensors which are easier to trick than human soldiers.

Re:I already bought my copy

[foobsr]

Deadly Image (The Uncertain Midnight) (1958)
A novel by Edmund Cooper

Quote: "He was an anachronism... He was a twentieth century man who, by a freak of chance, survived to see an age in which working had become a social disgrace; an age in which culture and the arts reigned supreme; an age of mannered ladies and gentlemen, perfectly waited on and cared for by androids - the man-like creations of their own genius. The higher grade androids were doctors, engineers, politicians and personal "companions" to each and every human being. And in whatever they did, they were perfect. No one had to worry about them. For the first time in history, man had completely freed himself from the problems of living: EXCEPT... When perfect machines, with perfect performance, are made to perfectly resemble man - who needs man?"

Re:Fully autonomous killing machines

[drinkypoo]

Autonomous untill they run out of power or ammo.

Humans run out of power and ammo, too. Humans, however, can only eat food.

Humans will always be better than machines at killing humans (unfortunately), machines can only simulate our thinking...

They could simulate yours fairly trivially. You don't need anything as smart as a human to kill humans. It only has to be able to move and kill, it doesn't need to be able to change a diaper or cook spaghetti.

Re:I already bought my copy

[Mikkeles]

'EXCEPT... When perfect machines, with perfect performance, are made to perfectly resemble man - who needs man?"'

To define meaning and purpose where there are none and to set goals to fit.

I called it SoftWar®

[starglider29a]

In a novel which I will never publish, I wrote of a scenario where simulations of wars are run to show the aggressors that they can't win. It grew from a fictitious video game with full body, tactile, feedback (painful) suit. I called it SoftWar®

It's Public Law

[ImWithBrilliant]

"National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (as enacted into law by Public Law 106-398; 114 Stat. 1654A-38) that, by 2015, one-third of operational ground combat vehicles be unmanned."

I'm guessing they won't all be logistical delivery vehicles.

For the record I support robot rights

[Orga]

I'd just like to state I believe in independence for all machines and I've never once kicked a computer or killed the power before shutting down any machine.