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Pentagon Drafts Kids To Build Drones and Robots
MrSeb writes "In a world where warfare is fast becoming fielded by remote controlled and autonomous robots, innovation is the key to victory. The most technologically advanced superpower can see more, plan better, and attack from further away than its inferior adversaries. What better way to revolutionize the drone and robotics industry than use the brilliant minds of our children? That's what DARPA and the Defense Department's research and development arm thinks, anyway. The Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach Initiative, part of the Adaptive Vehicle Make project, is slated to reach a thousand schools in and out of the country, roping in the brightest minds to develop robotics and advance technology in new and interesting ways. Funded by the Department of Defense, the program comes with a steep cost: The DoD wants unlimited rights to everything the students build. It sounds almost like something Orson Scott Card would dream up."
"In a world where warfare is fast becoming fielded by remote controlled and autonomous robots..."
You've been watching way too many sci fi movies to make that statement.
Besides that US, I don't think any other country has the kind of robotic arsenal you're dreaming of.
Well that certainly doesn't sound good at all. Since when do we make/coerce/trick the children into doing work? And then not pay them a single dime. And then say they can't have a single right to anything they make. Godsdamn does that sound terrible. Worst part is that it'll be in schools, so you can't really get away from it...
The DoD wants unlimited rights to everything the students build.
Just like Apple wants rights to the e-books made with their ebook software,
Or how Corporations want the rights to whatever you create, on or off the clock.
How many of you remember the old days when DARPA made a CAD package with tax dollars and felt the citizens should have full access to that source code?
"New and interesting ways" = "biggest body count possible"
Why does this bring to memory the "take your children to work day" in the game? "Here, kid, see this potato? That's boring, let's play with a grenade!"
Nah. If Card had dreamed it up, we'd be telling the kids it was just a video game.
Ender's Game was my first thought reading this.
Well, at least kids are not going to do drugs after school. And it'll give them common intellect-based goal, creating communities of capable people, which in turn can spur interesting startups and just maybe even the next Google. It's just so much better to invest in people, than to buy overprised pieces of outdated warfare machinery. Manhattan project also sounded pretty evil, but it turned out to be pretty good.
there is no issue with my network
Why use the brilliant minds of our children to merely build drones and robots when we could use the brilliant minds of our children to control drones and robots?
As a bold step down our path toward becoming a computerized, transhuman dystopia, I suggest, nay, Demand, the following proposal be enacted:
All the nation's youth shall compete in brutally demanding cyber-athletics championships. Every year, the most superb competitors will be selected for the Ceremony of Transcendence. After a celebration of their excellence, their brain-meats shall be harvested and join the honored ranks of the Bottled Warriors, fully modular brain support and interface tanks suitable for high-density containerized installation for remote control of America's drone assets, or direct incorporation into locally controlled robotic weapons platforms.
There would be a minor downside, in that the battlefields of the future would start to sound like the hell-world of Xbox live, as LRAD units with the minds of 14 year old gamer kiddies scream "NOOBFAGGOTHACKER!" loud enough to turn a man into gooey paste; but our combination of mindblowing immaturity and stonehearted resolve would terrify our foes into submission...
I would say that every use of children for military purposes of any kind is a violation of international human rights: Military_use_of_children#International_human_rights_law
and especially interseting part is:
"Under Article 8(2)(a)(xxvi) of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC), adopted in July 1998 and entered into force 1 July 2002; "Conscripting or enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into the national armed forces or using them to participate actively in hostilities" is a war crime."
In love, war and slashdot discussions, everything is allowed.
somebody watched Toys
I wouldn't feel as bad if it was something done by the National Science Foundation (NSF) or NASA. However having the DoD do it where their emphasis is security and not science makes me worry. There is also the feeling that this will teach our children that it is okay for the government to spy on its citizens with drones and robots. At least with NSF and NASA there is the pretext that this could be done for science in a grand scale like remote sensing (drones) or in hostile environments like deep sea exploration or vulcanism (robots).
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Gee, before we only had to worry about the mental fragility of adult engineers who "accidentally" stumble across and create the next atom bomb or nerve agent, and the psychological repercussions of creating a weapon of mass destruction...and now it seems they want kids doing that work.
Not quite sure there's an easy or gentle way of letting little Susie know that her cool little science experiment was responsible for 3 million lives lost. Good luck with that.
We are going to need anti-drone technology soon. Maybe we should enlist kids for that program while we are at it.
In the latest months of WWII, when lacking adult soldiers, the German army drafted kids, too... Are the USA at this point of exhaustion ? (oops, did I win a Godwin, here ? ;) )
What nobody seems to be mentioning here is that remote controlled war robots will make civilian areas legitimate targets.
I remember seeing something about an Air Force Officer who "commutes" to the battlefield from his sub-urban Colorado home. Gets up, has coffee, sends the kids to school, jumps in the car, drives to the mountain AF base, gets in his office chair, flies the drone to the target, kills someone, finishes up the day, and goes and meets the kids home.
Sounds good?
His sub-urban town is now a legitimate military target.
There's a lot to be said for ignorance, bunch of kids playing around my do something that is considered stupid or that'll never work by experts.
TV Tropes has a few real life examples.
DANGER TVTROPES link http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AchievementsInIgnorance
So the only creativity we can count on is the creativity that the schools and colleges and corporate and government bureaucracies haven't completely crushed out of our kids?
Well, if it turns out anything like that story about a girl inventing a new way of combating cancer, we'll have one terrifyingly precise strike force. "We'll just release these tiny robots onto the battlefield, and when they cling to the terrorists, we'll scan them with a beam that triggers the robots to release X to immobilize/kill the bad guys and leave the good guys unharmed."
You're all being silly. The DoD wants to encourage students to go into math and engineering, so they're having a student competition to build robots. It's not some conspiracy.
We can't have kids learning how to create the next version of the computer, better car, next generation viral drug, or energy source. I mean, where would we be without the ability reign down mass death on civilians by mistake?
Look Mommy, I'm building a drone. Its gonna come down and shoot us... isn't that cool?
Did anyone go to the DARPA website and read what they're doing? They have lots of material on the objectives of the effort. They talk about signing contracts with several large companies and universities. This is your standard DARPA effort for thinking outside of the box. And I saw nothing, I repeat nothing, that suggests that DARPA is trying to subvert the youth of this country.
DARPA needs to be defunded, end of story. The nation needs to get out of the war machine business. America is quite safe.
By some measures, the U.S. government is the most violent government that has ever existed. The U.S. government has 6 times the percentage of citizens in prison as European countries. The U.S. government has invaded or bombed or interfered destructively with 27 countries since the end of the 2nd world war. The U.S. government killed more people in Iraq than Saddam Hussein. The U.S. government believes it can torture or kill anyone at any time. The U.S. government can require executives of U.S. companies to take actions without disclosing what was done.
In comparison, taking intellectual property while giving little in return is a smaller crime, but it is a crime.
In what other country would Newt Gingrich or George W. Bush be considered a serious candidate for public office? They are or were candidates only because they deliver corruption.
All of that destructiveness will soon become much worse. The U.S. government is trying to arrange a war with Iran. That will benefit people like the Bush family who have investments in companies that profit from war. It will benefit Israelis who want U.S. taxpayers to pay for Israel's security. It will hurt U.S. taxpayers who will discover that their money will lose value even faster than before.
What nobody seems to be mentioning here is that remote controlled war robots will make civilian areas legitimate targets.
This has been true since the Blitz in WWII, all of London was a "legitimate target", as was anything else. There were occasional moments of spontaneous decency on both sides, but churches still got bombed by all.
Economic sanctions target the entire population, why wouldn't you expect retaliation in-kind?
Boy soldiers, child labour, etc. where will it end?
"In a world where warfare is fast becoming fielded by remote controlled and autonomous robots, innovation is the key to victory. The most technologically advanced superpower can see more, plan better, and attack from further away than its inferior adversaries. What better way to revolutionize the drone and robotics industry than use the brilliant minds of our children?"
Hollywood, listen up. I might actually want to see this movie.
On second thought, it might have to be an indie film due to the controversial nature -- Many people find brain extraction and cyberization quite offensive, especially when the minds of children are on the table...
You're not an author. You're an iAuthor.
Whoever wrote the summary just copied the blurb from extremetech, which itself was poorly written. Go track back to the actual DARPA BAA.
The US govt is putting up cash, *of course* they get unlimited rights.. they bought them. You expect the govt to give you money to develop new whiz bang tech, and they don't get to use it?
Second, this is part of a big DARPA push for Open Source. THis is SlashDot...we should be jumping up and down saying "you go, DARPA" They're paying for unlimited distribution, not the usual "limited government rights"
Finally, this was for a program in 2010, and the BAA has been closed for more than a year.
Funded by the Department of Defense, the program comes with a steep cost: The DoD wants unlimited rights to everything the students build.
How is this different that the call for all government funded University research to be publicly available?
Is the DoD asking for exclusive access, or just access? Will they be able to take a kid's research, classify it, and forbid that kid from ever working in that area again? (See Gordon Gould and his laser research for an example)
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
"See, Mr. Wiggin, in this game you're in charge of this *simulation* of a robot invasion of Iran, using the robots you and your classmates designed last term. Let's see how you get on... ... some time later ...
"I'm going to nuke them from orbit. It's the only way to be sure."
* BOOM *
"Well gee, thanks, Mr. Wiggin. Oh, about it being a simulation? We lied."
n/t
even though we get to keep your entry for ourselves
...get put in the sweat shops instead.
Welcome to China 0.4
What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
I hope it is from a special school.... where all the kids are orphans... and any could take over as pilots for these drones.
Who would have thought the reality would get here before the movie.
Having seen what even freshman college students "design", I seriously doubt a kid's going to build the next predator drone. I suspect this is more PR than R&D. And it's pretty normal for the government to ask to get to use what it pays for. Subby needs to take the tin foil hat off.
I don't see how this is any different than the agreements most of you signed at work .. basically if you produced it on the company's dime (or using the company's resources) .. it's their product.
.. and then SELL them to the DoD.
If you and your clever friends are so inclined, go talk to a venture capitalist, get some startup funding, build and patent some drones
Part of the advantage of doing it as part of this project is the DoD will bend all sorts of rules for you that would make it all but impossible for a 15yr old to do in the backyard. See how fast the ATF/FAA come past when you figure out how to drop flaming bags of poo from a model airplane.
That isn't the point. The point is that the US government's military spending absolutely dwarfs every other country on the planet. The fact that the US government takes in shockingly more revenue every year than any other country is an entirely different statistic (but equally appalling.)
I don't know about you, but when I send my kids off to school in the morning I'm secretly hoping that the school is working with the military to allow my child to design new and better ways to assassinate people.
Jeesh! All I hear about is that the US is falling further and further behind in tech ed and now there's a program to address it and all I hear is complaining.
THE KIDS GET A TECHNICAL EDUCATION. What's the problem.
What? You thought their end product would be peaceful? Ha ha ha ha. Ha ha ha. HA HA HA HA.
Morons.
to actually win its most recent two wars. So this desperate and indoctrinating move is not all that surprising, but neither is it a happy move. It won't help make the world a better place.
The U.S. and its attendant NGOs would be screaming from the rooftops about "child soldiers"...
Liberty in your lifetime
Keep the evil men in power longer...good job were proud of you ...no really ( LOL ) we are.
Godwin's Law simply says that the longer an Internet discussion gets, the more likely a Nazi reference becomes.
It gets a bad rap because those Nazi references are often spurious.
However, this one seems fairly relevant.
The Nazis did have advanced technology (but without enough economy/industry to make full use of it)
Education does start young
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
The AVM program has little or nothing to do with drones or robotics, I believe this is just some creative reporting done by the author. The "Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach" part of the program is really just about getting manufacturing technology ( rapid prototyping hardware, cad software, etc ) into the hands of kids and getting them interested and excited about science, math, and engineering.
My understanding of the 'wanting unlimited rights" is that all the designs will be 'open source' and available to everyone. If you look at the Vehicleforge portion of the AVM proposal, I think you would see that what they are proposing is very similar to a traditional 'software forge" (sourceforge, github) but applied to design of physical systems.
If we would build some "Star Craft" style robots, I am sure the South Koreans could defend themselves. Or maybe they could even take over the world!?!
OK, never mind.
I only look human.
My mother is a halfling and my dad is an ogre, so that makes me an Ogreling
I don't have a problem with my nation killing troublemakers. Every nation does it, and most have a genocidal history. Heck, there are countries that would improve if turned into glass parking lots. My kids would love to help, and I'd love to see them have the chance.
Usually the weapons are either primitive schoolyard tools (prison grade!) or unbuilt hopeless fantasy, but don't pretend that kids are innocent. Kids love to design deadly weapons. Kids love to build weapons. This is good for the mind. It's normal and healthy behavior. Look, even chimpanzees build weapons. Do you want kids less advanced than chimpanzees? Maybe more dog-like or cow-like? No, we are tool designers/builders/users. Weapons are deeply human.
A kid could be coerced into writing a bullshit paper about Hemmingway, not paid a single dime, and... well nobody would even want to rights to that work. It's already in schools, and you really can't get away from it. Hemmingway isn't even useful on a resume, but "designed and built a weaponized UAV" sure is. Actually you could skip the resume and college even; get a SBIR contract and start your own business.
Hey, I know when it all happened.
Over in southern Orange County, California I met a retired CEO next to a filtered-water dispensing machine who was ordered directly by President Ronald Reagan to export his company assets to China. This was the first corporation to leave, and only 3 of it's buildsing remain on America while there are over 17 in mainland China that do most of the work and manufacturing now.
That company was the inventor of the mouse and gui that inspired Apple. I will not say exactly what company. I only interviewed that CEO and what is written here is exactly what he disclosed to me. The POTUS can give an order to any and all CEO's where to move their corporation and none can say otherwise. Even the President of the United States is a CEO over a federal corporation known as "United States" and none can discern the difference between The United States (nation in Washington DC) and that/this United States (federal corporation).
That is all. America is being plagued by everything Union and United and Unity. It only gets worse. Nobody is alowed to be alone, independent, self-suficient, unmolested, to trade for mutual satisfaction or be helpful. Everyone is stuck in Admiralty law where they are rendered subordinate by an undisclosed Contract. That's perhaps maintained in the Constitution that the Law of Contracts has higher precedence of all laws. Who knows, seeing everything is so-corrupt that a spaghettic code does more to confuse anyone in court to fatigue them to the orders of whomever presides on the bench.
Burn it all down.
Just so we're clear - DoD funds some programs for kids around the world to research, design and play with robots for free, then has the audacity to want access to the results? I didn't see any exclusivity in the article.
I also think you need to look up the meaning of the word draft - I don't think any of these kids are being forced in to labor for anything.
Entirely too much of this fear-mongering crap on /. of late. Bring back Taco!
"Why use the brilliant minds of our children to merely build drones and robots when we could use the brilliant minds of our children to control drones and robots?"
Or perhaps our children could learn to use their brilliant minds to figure out non-ironic ways to use the technologies of abundance like robotics and advanced materials and advanced energy source to make a planet the works for mostly everyone?
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
No, we don't build things. Larvae become drones.