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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.
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!"
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 It's just so much better to invest in people, than to buy overprised pieces of outdated warfare machinery.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
It all works out in the end. Orson Scott Card foretold of this and how it will lead to us defeating the Buggers, which opens up the galaxy to Human colonization.
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
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."
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.
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.
The problem comes when the kids grow up and decide to use this against their former masters. Adults don't often switch sides unless immediate survivability is on the table.
Beware of those who profit off the docile and persecute the unbelievers.
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?
To be fair, "unlimited rights" does not have the same meaning as "unlimited exclusive rights." It is a shitty summary though, and as with any samzenpus article, I feel dirty by spending more than a few seconds dedicated to it.
Brian Fundakowski Feldman
The problem comes when the kids grow up and decide to use this against their former masters
Yes, but when that happens, it's because those kids have to right the wrongs. they do noble things like find a new world for the hive queen to live on and learn the ways of the piggies, and redeem humanity. Though it's true, they are never quite as interesting as when they were kids.
"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.
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)
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?
Who would have thought the reality would get here before the movie.
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.
The U.S. and its attendant NGOs would be screaming from the rooftops about "child soldiers"...
Liberty in your lifetime
WWI & again in WWII???
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.
"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.