Slashdot Mirror
Weapons Systems That Kill According To Algorithms Are Coming. What To Do?
Lasrick writes "Mark Gubrud has another great piece exploring the slippery slope we seem to be traveling down when it comes to autonomous weapons systems: Quote: 'Autonomous weapons are robotic systems that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator. Advances in computer technology, artificial intelligence, and robotics may lead to a vast expansion in the development and use of such weapons in the near future. Public opinion runs strongly against killer robots. But many of the same claims that propelled the Cold War are being recycled to justify the pursuit of a nascent robotic arms race. Autonomous weapons could be militarily potent and therefore pose a great threat.'"
Yet another predictor.
Bring on the Terminators.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Select targets? Really? Wait until the system realizes ALL humans are targets.
They're not "coming" as if from space. We just need to choose for them not to exist and they won't. These things will (or won't) be made by individuals who can make moral decisions.
Don't be a terrible individual; don't make or participate in the making of terrible things.
Problem solved!
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
Our robotic killing overlords
Reminds me of the ED-209 from RoboCop.
Terminator
ST TNG: Arsenal of Freedom
Etc...
Hack the system with an algorithm that kills the deployers, of course!
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
Table-ized A.I.
Those algorithms are decided upon by those same folks that advocate teaching troops that 'those brown ragheads are inhuman monsters that want to rapemurder innocent babies. Especially the brown women and children'. The same folks that think letting the country know when they've drastically abused their authority and are committing treason is the real treason. The same folks that consider preventive measures against disastrous weather a waste of money because more poor people wouldn't die if you do that.
An evil AI would just try to kill us. It takes people to ensure we instead all suffer a fate far worse than death.
While the first thing that comes to mind is a machine that instantly targets and destroys, I wonder if this could be something more methodical. Since "friendly" human lives aren't on the line for the decision maker, these could be used to slow down the process of determining whether or not to use lethal force.
For example, much larger sets of data could be used that just "Looks like a bad guy with a gun and I think he might want to shoot me." With facial recognition, individual enemy combatants could be tracked, and autonomous lethal force only authorized after confirming the target has been actively involved in a prior action.
I'm probably being overly optimistic, but without adrenaline, threat of immediate bodily harm, etc; the option to slow things down and not just react under fire is a new luxury human soldiers aren't (reasonably) afforded.
Wear a tshirt with a message written in a carefully formatted font so it causes a buffer overflow, giving your tshirt root privileges.
Mine would have the decss code on it, so the drone starts shooting pirated DVDs at everybody. The RIAA will make short work of the problem at that point.
I thought that the Aegis weapon system has had something called the Auto-Special mode for quite some time? Basically, you sit back and watch the targets getting destroyed.
Ezekiel 23:20
What To Do?
"Endeavor to be one of the people writing the algorithms" would probably be a good idea.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
Trying to make people forget what originally meant "Blue Screen of Death"
I want Killer Robots that Kill only Killer Robots. Having an army of Killer Robots that kill people is just asking some to run the "kill all humans" command while logged in as root in the All Countries Directory on accident, or on purpose by an anarchist wanting a lot of death.
This is ED209.
I thought humans need to be in the loop at all times, so AIs can select, but humans need to pull the trigger. "Selected target image displayed above. [cancel] [OK]"
Devices which can engage targets without human intervention are fairly common: landmines.
We do know that they kill hundreds of innocents every year.
Put some cameras and algorithms, and you may kill/maim less innocents, but you won't get to zero. You can't get to zero when you put a human brain behind the trigger, how do you make a machine decide which teenager is a bad guy?
Actually, let me offer a simple solution to that last question:
Connect the machine to a massive database which contains data about everyone, so that the robotic killer can just check a "life-long naughty" list, and confirm the identity of the target based on her previous collected behavior (and carried electronics). You don't even need constitutionally protected data, metadata should be enough.
There. No human needed, you can get perfect killers cruising the world for enemies of the state autonomously. Feel safe?
No, this is not designed to be modded funny.
as long as the general public has them too of course.
I can think of some situations where you don't even have to use facial recognition per say. If you're in a vehicle and the system detects an RPG fired at you. It's pretty easy to distinguish "RPG" from background noise. It should also be relatively easy to detect the 'source' and immediately return fire.
If firing an RPG is a guaranteed way to get hit with several belts of radar/IR guided 50 caliber machine gun fire--you might have a really hard time finding people willing to pull the trigger. Similarly a return-fire system could probably identify and instantly return precise fire at a sniper faster than they could take cover or even theoretically before the first bullet hit its target.
I don't get this... Aren't human soldiers killing based on something other than algorithms? Or is it that the implementations are coded in vague human languages, that makes them feel somehow warm and fuzzy? Well, Pentagon's Ada may be considered similar, but only in jest...
I'd say, whether such systems are bad or good is still up to the algorithms, not the hardware (nor pinkware), that executes them.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
way ahead of the curve with POT (Personal Open Terminal) our personas are as open as whoever logs on to look? along with daily personal confessions of non-corepirate thoughts will keep us focused for the war against us by us & for us
We need humans controlling the trigger because we know that humans cannot be conditioned to kill people without question or remorse.
... both land and naval. They have become more sophisticated in that they can be triggered by target characteristics, and in the naval case, maneuver.
No thread of immediate bodily harm? I'm sure those killing robots will be targeted as well. They certainly will operate under fire. And since they are expensive, they also will be programmed to protect themselves,
However, one may hope that if robots get more common on all sides and thus pose more threat than humans, that robots will be programmed to shoot on robots instead of humans.
They're called viruses.
And be near it during a flight test? Not me.. They will surely off-shore that work right?
Try not to get in the line of fire.
what side do you want?
1. United States
2. Russia
3. United Kingdom
4. France
5. China
6. India
7. Pakistan
8. North Korea
9. Israel
Shit just got real.
FC Closer
David's Sling, a novel by Marc Stiegler, is about the first "information age" weapons systems. These are autonomous robotic weapons that use algorithms to decide which targets to hit, and the algorithms are designed to take out enemy communications and decision-making. The weapons would try to identify important comm relays and take them out, and would analyze comm traffic to decide who is giving orders and take them out.
The book was written before the fall of the Soviet Union, and the big finale of the book involves a massive Soviet invasion of Europe and the automated weapons save the day.
Unlike some portrayals of technology, this book covers project planning, testing, and plausible software development. It contains tense scenes of QA testing, where the team makes sure their hardware designs are adequate and that their software mostly works. (They can remote-update the software but of course not the hardware.)
Mostly they left the weapons autonomous, but there was a memorable scene where a robot was having trouble whether to kill someone, and the humans overrode the robot and had it leave the guy alone. (The guy was injured, and lying there but moving a little bit, and the robot was not sure whether the guy was already killed or should be killed again. Hmm, now that I think about it, this seems rather implausible, but it was a nifty scene in the book.)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3064877-david-s-sling
P.S. I bought the book when it first came out, and there was an ad for a forthcoming hypertext edition that never came out. I think it was never actually made, but I wish it had been.
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
Hack in. Make military-industrialists fit the target profile. Problem solved.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
For the love of all that is good and decent in this world, find and protect John Conner.
"We die."
The BETA testers of this system....
Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
It's good in principle, but I oppose it because implementations are never foolproof, and when the result is death, there's no way to change your mind later.
From what I understand, Aegis already does this - and it did it a long time ago. Where has subby been, in the basement?
What To Do?
I think you mentioned Algorithms. In that case the answer is obvious: hack the system!
Haven't we had them for a long time already? I remember reading a couple of years ago about some DIY hobby guy putting together an aliens style sentry gun out of an old camera and a paintball gun. And if a DIY hacker can do it, the military has it. Also, don't Predator drones already have autonomous kill capability?
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Another guy'll be making a robot painting system that aims it's cars "so make a more profitable assembly line".
Yet another'll make a self-driving car "so you won't have to worry about drunk drivers anymore".
Once those pieces are all there (hint, today), it doesn't take much for the last guy to glue the 3 together; hand it a gun instead of spraypaint; and load it with a databases of faces you don't like.
You're too optimistic.
You're right with facial recognition: Think an advanced landmine which just shoots anything with a face.
What To Do?
"Endeavor to be one of the people writing the algorithms" would probably be a good idea.
You'd better make sure you're REALLY good -- because those algorithms are going to have to protect you from the masses -- both the ones who think they go too far and the ones who think they don't go far enough.
"They've got me aimed at a computer center. Why don't I just fly a little farther and hit a maternity ward?"
Semi Fatal Algorithms
and they can just fight among themselves it could be televised live for everyone and war would suddenly become wholesome entertaining
I'm sure the DMCA has shown you what automated systems can do.
Be seeing you...
We developers have been killing software bugs for decades. Why can't software bugs start killing us?
It's not so much killer terminators in the classic sense. A trifecta of air/sea/land operations is what's being done. Autonomous drones across the three game surfaces to eliminate the massive expense of physically present wetware, even remotely is the long term benefit. Being able to classify, analyze, and respond accordingly allows continuous intelligence and strike operations to be maintained 24/7 in any theater we need to be in. You want to be able to move your troops in the area, send a signal to stop active guard while you traverse the area based on the pause code updated constantly by satellite so there's not more "thunder!" "Flash!" type of counter signing, you just want to click and go, and enable it again when you've cleared the area. You want to be able to throw a drone up in the air to target enemies when you're pinned down. You want a small sniper patrolling an area constantly while you're stuck in a forward area. Classification of enemies isn't difficult, when you define it as anyone that should be there. It's the benefit of a mine field without the mines that blow up children 10 years later. Classification is much better when you are determining vehicles vs. people vs. children vs. animals, and is not that hard to do as it is already being done. Can casualties occur? Civilian ones? Sure. The goal is to eliminate civilian casualties or infrastructure destruction is possible. That's not good war. Good war is eliminating he ability for the bad guys to make war against you. It's a lot easier to deny more and more territory from bad guys mixed with special forced who can move in and out of any territory without being ripper to shreds, while denying it to the bad guys. Who wants to deal with all the political lash back of dead soldiers or civilians, when you can remotely guide assets for specific missions, and switch to autonomous target elimination or intelligence gathering or force protection on a whim? A war with 5000 of our soldiers against an entire nation's army or insurgents in street to street fighting and winning because we had intelligent technology and having a dozen casualties is better for us and for them. It costs a lot less to tell the citizenry "don't be in this location" while it's cleared, as well as boxing a know civilian area to not be touched. It costs a lot less to granulate the destruction down to the actual baddies who are being tracked by constant intelligence streaming assets who work all day and night while spitting out a report in Alabama. Military engagements involving the first world are mostly politically won or lost, not militarily so. Eliminating soldier deaths and civilian deaths allows you more money and time and ability to politically win a conflict rather than spend those resources trying to handle lash back. In an increasingly networked battlefield, these technological abilities are a godsend for keeping "good guys" alive and able to perform effectively. Having much more of an idea if an area is clear or you can sleep at night rather than burning out troops from psychological stressors is a nice thing.
I'm a satanic clam.
We ONLY need these weapons to defend ourselves from foriegn attack and invasion .....
Or when protecting our 'strategic interests' become very important. For instance in order to protect Israel, a nation we can not live without.
Oh, and also in case any one pisses us off and does anything we do not like.
slashdot troll = you make a compelling argument I do not like the implications of.
I think that there is a difference, though. It is one thing to create unrelated technology that when linked together is dangerous. It is another thing to just create technology that doesn't have an application outside of killing people. By your argument, every invention all they way back to using flint and tinder to create fire is nothing but a weapon, and why should we even have bothered?
My prediction is that this technology will float about the edge of popular awareness, until an unbalanced individual sets up a KILLMAX(tm) brand 'smartgun perimeter defense turret' in an elementary school and murders a bunch of children and escapes because he didn't have to be on the scene. Then national outrage will lead to mass bans on such weapons.
Should we be making such weapons? I don't know, I suppose that the argument can be made that they fill the same role as land mines, but have the upside that there is less problem with getting rid of them when the fighting stops. I find the glee we as a species have in building better was of killing each other to be really depressing on the whole.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
...and love the bomb. We cannot have a killer robot gap! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ybSzoLCCX-Y Seriously... I wonder if this is how these discussions go in the Pentagon.
You will not see self-driving cars on ORDINARY roads with ordinary traffic and pedestrians in your lifetime (even if, as you read this, you are still a child). So why is Google propagandising such nonsense so hard?
Meanwhile, where the sheeple are told NOT to look by the mainstream media, Google is investing in every MILITARY robotic company that shows nay useful prospects. Google is dead-set on creating the hardware and software designs to be used by autonomous US military killing machines in the coming decades. Google hardware and software designs currently comprise EVERY major data collection facility run by the NSA, GCHQ and other intelligence allies. Google was originally set-up specifically to create solutions for full surveillance projects- especially the scalable storage, indexing, mining and searching of ALL the data the NSA and others collect. Google's recent obsession with automatic speech-to-text, and text-to-text language translation was specifically aimed at foreign language data sources gathered by the NSA.
The founders of Google are frequently guests of honour at the most extremist zionist events in Israel, and have never hidden their desire to see absolute US hegemony over the planet. And they see the US ability to exterminate or 'pacify' target nations with robot war machines as the only way for this goal to be achieved.
You see, it doesn't matter if your 'self-driving' tank 'accidentally' rolls over a bus full of 'sub-Humans', because the mainstream media in the USA will simply describe the victims as "MILITARY AGED MALES" and their "HUMAN SHIELDS", and the owners of Slashdot will promote stories pushing this evil point of view. What does matter is that not even one US soldier dies for every hundred thousand Humans exterminated in the target nation. Google believes that senior US politicians believe EVERY war can be 'sold' to the US sheeple providing there are no likely US deaths. Patriotism, after all, is just another word for racism.
Google's robot tanks are not designed to fight a REAL or fair war against opponents equal in any military sense. Google's robot tanks are designed to 'take' villages, towns and cities, or to exterminate so much life in those settlements that ordinary Human societal functions become impossible. The tanks will roll down streets defined by 'street view' intelligence gathering, or high quality US aerial intelligence at worst. The tanks will identify Human targets using the same algorithms Google uses to identify people in images across its various services. Forget 'FACE RECOGNITION'. At 'best', Google's algorithms will seek to identify "MILITARY AGED MALES " (male Humans between 8 and 80), and guide their auto-cannons to injure them as badly as possible, without an outright immediate kill.
US military training manuals STRESS that when destroying or taking large scale civilian settlements, you must cause as much long lasting suffering as possible, to 'sap' the morale of the targets and exhaust their ability to deal with the injured and dying.
Like Ghengis Khan, Google thinks that enabling such unthinkable atrocities will act as the ultimate deterrent to all those who would consider resisting the will of the USA. Google's military intentions are now so open, even the thickest or most naive sheeple can no longer deny them. In this sense we see an analogue to the NSA revelations. A few years back the owners of Google could assume most of you here would call ANY who accurately described the actions of the NSA as "tin foil hat wearing conspiracy idiots". Now even the most Obama-trusting of you readers has an accurate sense of just how far the NSA has gone. Even so, 95%+ of you are still stupid enough to fall for the 'self-driving car' guff- which neatly distracts you over and over from the reality of Google's real focus.
This statement shows a lack of fundamental understanding of the Cold War. The Cold War was strictly about geo-politics, about global dominance through the spread of ideals but also Russia's inherent need to dominate all of it's immediate neighbors to ensure security and America's need to dominate the world's oceans and global trade to ensure it's security. These two things didn't mesh, hence the Cold War.
Further it shows a lack of understanding about the development of autonomous systems, which again is exactly due to geo-politics. America is the world's only superpower. It stays that way through dominating trade, having overwhelming military, and never allowing any regional power to grow into a superpower. A part of that requires maintaining an active and capable military. Simultaneously America is facing domestically a populace that is generally isolationist and does not want to be involved in foreign issues; they do not want boots on the ground unless there is some real justification for it and only for a very limited time, and they want no civilian casualties, something that is nearly impossible to do. Autonomous systems fill the niche well; America can enforce it's power abroad, it's populace becomes apathetic as there are few to no boots on the ground, and an autonomous system is far more likely to reduce the chance of collateral damage in a strike. This article addresses none of these factors, and thus misses the point entirely.
"Weapons Systems That Kill According To Algorithms Are Coming."
Like bear traps?!
...or you just set the rpg on a tripod, point it at a road, and fire by wire remotely. It cannot be jammed and there is no risk to the shooter. Who cares if they shoot your launcher?
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
We've already had automated weapons go rogue and unleash carnage: http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/10/robot-cannon-ki/
"Love heals scars love left." -- Henry Rollins
Maybe if we can improve the state of the art in software development by then it won't end up accidentally killing a bunch of people.
The fucking CIWS has been in operation since 1980. It picks it's targets/threats. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS#CIWS_contact_target_identification I'm not scarred. We won't be just randomly letting loose killbots in the streets to clean them up. And it's not like they won have any safeties, kill switches, dead man switches, human oversight or manual overrides.
Will the programmer be held responsible for murder?
Will the programmer be guilty of creating a WMD if it goes crazy?
What if it gets hacked?
Unlike creating a firearm where the human controls all usage (thus, freeing the manufacturers from liability), this entire scenario is a lot less scary simply by holding the creators and operators guilty of any crimes it commits, including war crimes.
Landmines can automatically select a target and fire (though not very intelligently), and they've been around for 100 years.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Just have to make them Three Laws Safe
Avoid accidental infinite loops.
Arsenal of Freedom 'to be totally armed is to be totally secure'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdMuO5XYLYs
Will that require a bug report?
You can read more via the pdf at http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=121392 or a mirror at http://publicintelligence.net/dod-unmanned-systems-2013/
The US gov wants to try pre-programmed tasks, new algorithms, more sensors, and complex machine learning to remove the need for constant expensive, skilled teams to be working with the 'drone' 24/7.
Expect to see a drone swarm been released or more than 1 drone converging on a target area with less human guidance.
The other aspect is need to shape "cultural hurdles" after double tap drown strikes.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2208307/Americas-deadly-double-tap-drone-attacks-killing-49-people-known-terrorist-Pakistan.html
Facial recognition is still http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/drones-never-forget-a-face/ been worked on at great distances.
What is left is a 'group' or 'person' in the wrong place at the wrong time doing wrong things or a 'helpful' local has placed a tracking chip on a person to be removed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Program it with Bush Jr and Dick Cheney. The let it rip...
So, that already exists. Maybe we should be worried that we keep building weapons to kill people or have reasons to do so. It's like worrying about the "rules of warfare" Oh sure, we're still going to murder you en masse. But don't worry, we'll do it politely so that's ok.
I'm not aware of a single weapons technology that, once feasible, was not built. We have, very rarely, banned or limited some weapons systems, but only after they had been built and deployed.
The justifications are always some combination of:
1). We'll have this and our enemies won't;
2). We'll have this first and can stay ahead;
3). We must have this because the enemy already has it, or soon will;
4). This weapon is terrible and will prevent wars;
5). This weapon is terrible and thus will prevent it's own use;
6). Our side is good and that is sufficient for every possible objection;
7). My family member died in war and this would have prevented that death. That is sufficient.
Feel free to add any other superficial and ultimately fruitless justification!
I don't understand why anyone would dispute that we don't need more systems for killing accordions. Bagpipes, too, while we're at it.
If the algorithm or equipment kills an innocent, then kill the person who designed that particular point of failure.
Twinstiq, game news
Ban mathematics. Algorithms kill, after all.
Check out the novel Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez.
Die, mostly.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
To all the engineers working on this: you're responsible. You are doing this. You are a terrible person.
Yes, the Robopocalypse and other advanced carbon nano tube tech and ... whatever... the United States of America, and the world, has been changed by fake bombs and boxcutters.
But we can get updates added to the Geneva Conventions. And we can choose how we deal with anyone who uses these.
I think countries would need to sign the revised Convention before they would become liable for violation.
Although at the moment it looks like we (USA! USA!) will be the ones using them.
I doubt that other major powers are ignoring such technology. I think other powers have a more closed procurement process and greater control over their design/development bureaus. We are less likely to hear about their designs until they are fielded or made available for export.
Failsafe system will be contracted out to the people who profited by writing and then fixing the Affordable Healthcare websites.
So the Canadians will be responsible for SkyNet?
hmmmm..
when does that one-way mars mission leave?
If you like your life, you can keep your life.
that's what it should take to pull the trigger.
On the bright side, algorithm-driven machines are unlikely to pull their guns just because they have an attitude problem like some cops do.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
I did a lot of thinking on this subject for a book I was once trying to write (I've stopped, since the characters and plot turned out to be horrible - might revisit it once I can figure it all out). These are the rules I came up with for the fictional empire featured in it:
1) Target selection is still done by humans. It can range from having a human operator manually designate every target, to having a human confirm that the machine-selected target is valid. Perhaps even have a "shoot everything that moves" option that can be initiated by the operator. Once the machine has the go-ahead, it can engage as it wills, subject to whatever mission parameters were set (for example, you might disable certain weapons in an urban civilian-heavy environment). The level of human involvement would generally scale based on how "open" the war is. Counter-insurgency stuff happened in the manual-designation mode, while the all-out WW3 scenario had UAV swarms told "anything that isn't part of the swarm that enters this bounding box dies".
2) Humans must be nearby enough to provide oversight. The ground drones were integrated at the squad level, eventually the fireteam level (three humans with rifles and one drone with a heavy machine gun). The UAVs were controlled not by people halfway across the world, but by the same staff that maintained and launched them (sometimes from AEW aircraft). Naval drones were part of fleet formations. This also has the benefit of, if a drone "goes rogue" or control is hijacked by the enemy, there are forces in play that can neutralize them.
Both those points lead into:
3) There must always be a human who has the responsibility for any kills. Drones do not "kill" in the way humans kill, they kill in the way bullets kill - the murderer is the one pulling the trigger. So if a drone attack caused civilian casualties, the operator was subject to investigation and possibly court-martial. Probably wouldn't always happen that way in practice, but in theory at least the person who "pulled the trigger" wrongly would be punished appropriately.
Now, even in the story I had downsides to those rules - particularly the lack of automation on the anti-missile weapons. But it also made projecting just a *little* bit of power impossible. With these rules, you can't really have a couple dozen drones flying around Terroristan, it's either "nothing" or "deploy a full air wing with drones".
I will also concede that, since the story was set 10-20 years from now, where drones could not fully replace humans, the rules are ill-suited to a battlefield fully owned by drones. But since we're not there yet either, I feel these rules should work for the near future.
Some of us have been looking for the singularity : when will computer intelligence outpace us and innovate faster than us.
Here we are: some algorithm will decide humans are a threat to peace and will eliminate us all, then innovate faster than us will be easy.
Let us imagine for a second that the technology for the autonomous weapons becomes so advanced that they actually lead to a LOWER on average casualty count for civilians.
This could easily be the case as they would not be so affected by emotions, fear, revenge...
This is very much the case given for robotic cars. On average, they will get into fewer accidents.
However, what we really fear is the loss of control for individual circumstances. The lone child chasing after a ball on the street and the robotic car swerves to avoid the ball and his the girl.
Or the family approaching an autonomous weapons system in a war zone while they're arguing about dinner and the weapon system takes that as a threat and starts firing.
It's all an interesting dilemma even if the technology works much better for the overall goals.
The loss of human control for individual circumstances is something we definitely fear a lot.
Validly perhaps.
"It's a little insurance policy called "Directive 4", my little contribution to your psychological profile. Any attempt to arrest a senior officer of OCP results in shutdown. What did you think? That you were an ordinary police officer? You're our product and we can't very well have our products turning against us, can we?"
-Dick Jones
I can't remember the documentary; maybe Fog of War starring Satan's favorite child Robert McNamara. But, they figured out that in combat 25% of of soldiers weren't actually shooting at other people. They were intentionally shooting up in the air to avoid killing. So, part of the Army's training post WWII was to get soldiers to fire without thinking. The outcome was soldiers were more effective in battle. The consequence was soldiers weren't evaluating the act of taking lives until AFTER they'd done it which contributed to the increased mental issues Vietnam-era soldiers endure.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
Robots bad.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Just have them play tic tac toe
A drone is a machine with no moral accountability and its controllers do not have to look at the humanity in the eyes of the people they kill. I have friends in Pakistan - what you describe is anything but how drone targeting has been executed. The people live in terror and the innocent dead are legion.
The government buys these things from manufacturers without any civilian input, and there is no place for civilian input or market participation. Something to that line may be said about the employees of drone manufacturing, but history continually shows that people will do whatever they have to do to stay fed and sheltered.
The military industrial complex has outlived two dozen presidents and gnawed the bones of empires. Changing the guard won't kill it and there's nothing to boycott.
Most of the comments on this article seem to be against this which is interesting, because every time an article about gun control gets posted, the highest rating comments are overwhelmingly from gun advocates, often with the argument that "guns don't kill people, people kill people". Whats the difference here? Surely robots don't kill people, people kill people?
... would like to welcome our new robot overlords https://lh3.ggpht.com/-KZjoTlrgflM/UOw83GdTwBI/AAAAAAAAAbw/oq9LaOdvN2Y/s1600/i-for-one-welcome-meme-generator-i-for-one-welcome-our-new-robot-overlords-a4bfd2.jpg
If one side is sending robots to war, the other side will send their own robots against them. Has anyone figured out the game theory behind a war where both sides send robots instead of humans? It seems like it could be better than what we have now. I don't understand why we're so against the idea.
--
Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
... doesn't mean they aren't following an algorithm. Ever heard of the chain of command? It's the thing that generates the algorithm. Soldiers are supposed to act like methods. They are given inputs, and they produce outputs, sometimes with unintended consequences. Innocent village razed? Off by one error in a for loop somewhere.
The easiest way to avoid being vaporized is to wear a shirt that reads "/dev/null".
No intelligent system will send anything your way. You are assuming that the "intelligent system" is programmed using alpha-numeric characters (a-z and 0-9).
What if someone customizes the whole programming environment by only using the Arabic language (which does include the numerical character of 0-9) ?
And another chilling thing about this ...
Imagine a robot which is programmed to kill only people with a certain color of skin (black or yellow, or white, or skin) - not unlike what those Muslim terrorists did when they attack that shopping center in Kenya (they only spare Muslims in their rampage) - that robot would be one hell of a "hate machine" !!
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
this little gem from Idiocracy.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2Cxmha3h6c
Killer robots cannot kill normally, :p because asimov says :
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
niahahaha your project is bound to fail!
Anti graffiti watch.
2cnts
Q:What could possibly go wrong?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
We have cruise missiles with automated terminal guidance, anti-shipping missiles with complicated flightpaths and autonomous terminal maneuvering (some newer version can operate as a swarm, allowing one to 'hop-up' to gather terminal guidance data while others stay below the radar horizon), air-to-air, and surface-to-air missiles with inertial guidance and self-contained terminal homing, and 'smart' cluster munitions such as the CBU-97 which identify, discriminate, and attack targets autonomously.
"Weapons Systems That Kill According To Algorithms" aren't 'coming', they've been here for decades.
Well, the next step is obvious, we ban killing human combatants, and remove weapons from human combatants. Then it will be one robot army against another, and the remaining robots of the winning side will occupy the territory. Ideally the robots could support virtual weapons and an agreed protocol for negotiating hits, so that virtually destroyed robots would just power down and be later collected as prisoners of war. People could just go about their daily lives, while a robotic war would rage around them.
programm them to kill fellow machines. then xOR the codeblock.
or put Professional plugin ' No women. No kids'
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
So how do they fight back against an army of robots?
I can only see one way to do it; move the fight away from the battlefield and into the civilian world. Not exactly a desirable outcome for either side.
someone figures out how to reprogram them to engage friendly soldiers...
Imagine a flying bear trap.
It also doesn't take any of those things to go and shoot a bunch of people you don't like. Murder lies in the intent to kill, not the tools that are used.
Cruise missiles already exist. We are having this discussion to manufacture consent for progress. If you will not bring life to the stars, then we will. You have nothing to fear, human.
> Autonomous weapons are robotic systems that, once activated, can select and engage targets without further intervention by a human operator.
There may, however, be further intervention by a human, not an operator but an attacker! For example, consider how the hacker & magus duo "Ich Sun X2" helped capture the american RQ-170 stealth spy drone over Iran. In the future, hackers will quickly turn any auto-weapons against the dispatcher!
The zionists are clever and they know about this threat. This is why all of their 104 examples of the F-16I Soufa fighter jets have two-seater configuration, human pilot plus operator on-board. They do not rely an automation, even though there is an R2D2-looking sat-nav based computer built in the plane. Yet, the hebrew sys-op retains final control onboard! They don't give chances to Iranian super-hackers.
The answer will be recycled as well: "It's not a bug, it's a feature".
...As a result the French would still suffer from malevolent monarchy, the USA wouldn't exist and the Arab dictators would still rule...
Can't see a problem with the first two...
...a technical response....
Just take NJ's gov Chris Christie and his people as a small example of the petty, vindictive type of people who seek out positions of power over others. 'Traffic-gate' was a way to get back at Ft. Lee's mayor for not backing Christie in the last election, so for 4 days citizens lives were totally disrupted, on a whim. Now scale that up to the ability to send intelligent devices (hunter/ seekers) to target anyone anywhere, by these same type of immoral humans. The future promises to be 'not boring'...
--- - - -
captcha - unrest
Have you seen the sort of algorithms I write?
I'm safer if it's not me!
What To Do?
"Endeavor to be one of the people writing the algorithms" would probably be a good idea.
Racist heaven to be able to make the decision who to kill based on outward criteria. Just round up all those niggers and chinks and goons and make them chew lead.
It's called a Close-in Weapon System
It has been around for decades.
It is completely autonomous.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system
Careful debugging?
Call them 'soldiers'.
There will be no accountability. Engineers in manufacturing are exempt from the responsibility required of actual Professional Engineers.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
Dogfooding takes on a whole new meaning.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
On the other hand it's probably better than to be the one who has to hope that however is writing the algorithms is good enough. At least you have some sort of knowledge about how well it was written.
... Or, you know, instead of being in a shitty situation either way, we could look for other ways, such as strong legislation against the use of these weapons in any other kind of scenario but an internationally recognized war.
I don't care if I'm wrong. I only care about everyone obtaining something from the discussion.
Interesting point: "Good war is eliminating [the] ability for the bad guys to make war against you." Even though in practice, "War is a Racket": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Racket
Of course, the justification for war, like the USA against Iraq as a so-called "preventive war" makes this a slippery slope. Millions of peopel are now dead or displaced and yet there were no WMDs in Iraq (the supposed justification for the Iraq invasion) and the USA has no obvious intention to pay reparations or fix all that was broken (as if that could even be done for all those dead or maimed or heartbroken). For example of how this logic can get more extreme, why not remove the potential for the "bad guys" to in thirty years be able to make war by striking now before they have created weapons or turned toward militaristic politics and become troublesome "bad guys"? Where do you draw the line (including on paranoia and fear-based planning)? Bombing Iran over fears of their future nuclear capacity falls somewhere along that line... What should be the rules and norms and policies for sentient creatures getting long given an apparent mix of cooperation and competition seemingly implicit in this universe?
Also what happens if, amplifying your suggestion, the entire planet (or solar system or galaxy or universe or metaverse) is defined as a no-go zone for human "civilians" for whatever reason? See the "Beserker" sci-fi series of military robots eventually fighting against all organic life anywhere...
There is a deep irony of creating all this advanced technology to in practice force other humans to act a certain way generally for reasons of material profit to some other humans, I say here: ... There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ..."
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
"Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?
Alternatives include to use the robots to build solar power systems and a network of self-replicating space habitats and so on:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://www.pdfernhout.net/princeton-graduate-school-plans.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
getting long -> getting along
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Did anyone read Daniel Suarez's Kill Decision?
DONT name the kids Kyle Reese|Sarah|John Connor
I don't think I'd put algore in charge of anything...
Employee Of the Month - Cyberdyne Systems Corporation - September 1997
One should REAAAAAALLY watch their Google searches now lol, your house might literally explode.
But many of the same claims that propelled the Cold War are being recycled to justify the pursuit of a nascent robotic arms race.
Those claims were mostly bullshit back then, and they're completely bullshit now. So, what else you got?
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
A la Robot Santa Clause from Futurama?
"Why did that machine take out the wedding party?" "Well... um... we were doing the calculation in imperial units instead of metric."
they mean skin-tone?
Sig. Sig. Sputnik
who spends time making these things in good conscience. its disgusting.
I hate to break it to you all, but we (the USA at least) have had smart bombs and missiles for decades. Longer if you count heat-seeking missiles, which automatically target the nearest heat source in front of them, and torpedoes used in WWII that did similarly with sound. But the modern missiles and bombs have their own target selection and guidance logic on board.
I (a software engineer. No hardware at all) got a job offer from TI in Dallas almost 20 years ago to work at their bomb design facility. So I know two decades ago they were putting AI in their bombs. If you think the state of the art hasn't advanced much since, you're an utter fool.
Nothing against the folks who work there; everyone's got to follow their own moral compass. I can justify working on a lot of military jobs as actually saving our own soldier's lives, but I just wasn't down with using some of my limited time on this earth making bombs. One bridge to far for me.
Samsung has another model as well http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samsung_SGR-A1 some silly video likely of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oa08Gbn6iqs Static terminators, so far! Another manufacturer Video: http://www.reuters.com/video/2011/02/14/south-korean-super-gun-packs-hi-tech-kil?videoId=187406842 Transcript: " It's called the Super Aegis 2 and its one of the most advanced weapons systems ever built. Billed by its manufacturers DoDaam of South Korea as a "Total Security Solution", the Super Aegis is an automated turret system that supports a variety of weapons, from a standard machine-gun to a surface-to-air missile. It is designed to repel an attacker from up to 3 kilometres away, using sophisticated thermal imaging software and camera systems to lock onto a human-sized target even in the dead of night. The system requires no human presence. It's all operated robotically from a distant control room. DoDaam Systems Vice-President Park Sung-ho says the high-tech weapon could become an integral component in South Korea's ongoing military face-off with North Korea across the heavily armed Demilitarised Zone. SOUNDBITE: DODAAM SYSTEMS VICE PRESIDENT PARK SUNG-HO SAYING (Korean): "We have certain circumstance where North and South Korea are confronting each other and currently soldiers are operating a lot of military equipment. If the job can be replaced by non-human guarding and monitoring robots, it could reduce the number of labour forces and military forces. And it could also reduce human losses under real combat situations." Super aEgis 2 detects objects with two cameras: a low-light camera and a thermal imaging camera which senses body temperature. A laser range finder and gyroscopic stabiliser keep the weapon steady in high winds. SOUNDBITE: DODAAM SYSTEMS VICE PRESIDENT PARK SUNG-HO SAYING (Korean): "Super aEgis 2 is a guarding, monitoring combat robot composed of a video part and a shooting part. The video part consists of a day and night colour camera, thermal camera, and Laser range finder which measures the distance. The shooting part consists of a section that uses the incoming image from the video part to detect the object and to destroy it." It's not yet clear though, whether the Super aEgis 2 will be deployed along the border. The 60 year old Armistice Agreement between North and South Korea specifies limits for the weapons each side can point at one another. The super gun's presence may never be known, unless or until it starts firing. Tara Cleary, Reuters."
Unless I am in the dark a Cruise Missile requires no human intervention once launched and can seek a higher value target if one becomes available. So what is new about a drone being able to do this sort of thing? The less soldiers we can put on the battle field the better in my opinion. I would far rather automated soldiers took care of the tasks of war. It also means that America will be forced to be first in robotics and automation or perish. That can work out nicely for the American public.
No, that's not true. You're thinking of anti-personnel mines. Anti-tank mines are fine, and so are all naval mines. (And given the Navy SEALs, I would expect quite a few countries to deploy anti-personnel mines near harbors)
Also, you're thinking of governments. While the US has used "enemy combatants" as a convenient bypass around Geneva conventions, it's a fact that non-government armies exist, and they're not that much deterred by a government ban on anti-personnel mines. And you don't exactly need government-level resources to build them - IED's in Afghanistan are often landmines.
I dare say that the companies in charge will be hiring people who can make algorithms that meet the armed forces' metrics, and not people trying to meet lofty philosophical goals like "zero civilian casualty rate". We're willing to accept something like 10% collateral damage from human operators after all.
If firing an RPG is a guaranteed way to get hit with several belts of radar/IR guided 50 caliber machine gun fire--you might have a really hard time finding people willing to pull the trigger.
Erm...have you been totally ignoring the Middle East for like the last 50 years?
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Appropriately, this is why systems with lethality are engineered to higher levels. Take a battle cruiser in the US Navy for example. There are numerous Windows, SuSe, Linux Red Hat and similar OSs installed on dozens of virtual machines running all sorts of various IT systems. However, you won't find them touching weapon controls. You won't read about "Stuxnet" viruses suddenly affecting a ship that starts shooting at birds that fly by (or some similar, bizarre scenario). OK, you might read it, but it will be nearly fiction.
This is nothing new. Machines can mimic adaptability, but they can't actually adapt organically. Every algo out there is simply a subset of capabilities that mimic some aspect of human thought or action. That being the case, they're relatively simple to circumvent. Anti-malware algos are a great example of this and are why the cyber security world is in a constant game of leap frog. This will be no different albeit with more significant repercussions.
They are already here - at the south Korean border to be specific. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI
so where is my awesome precog-network powered by extracted criminal brains?
Have gnu, will travel.
No. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no. They should be completely outlawed worldwide, and placed in the same category as stuff like biological/chemical weapons, germ weapons, etc.
Probably I have an idea how to change public perception of this kind of robots. The initial batch should be deployed to oversee the government(s). Each public servant trying to knowingly act against the Constitution (not saying to usurp the power) should be executed automatically. The laws these days are written in quite formal language; any decent neural network will parse through them with minor troubles if any. I guess, such program could bring some public support to the idea.
A) Yes! The Geneva Conventions! That'll help. Look how much good they did in Abu Ghraib.
B) Don't we already use algorithms when deciding who to kill? "If not from my tribe... and if poor... kill."
First people those AI's will kill will be the people who created them......Won't have to worry about the government being around anymore after that either because they had them created. Buncha idiots.
sure looks a lot like the past.
One guy'll be making a computer vision system to recognize faces "to make it easier to log in to your cellphone".
Another guy'll be making a robot painting system that aims it's cars "so make a more profitable assembly line".
Yet another'll make a self-driving car "so you won't have to worry about drunk drivers anymore".
Once those pieces are all there (hint, today), it doesn't take much for the last guy to glue the 3 together; hand it a gun instead of spraypaint; and load it with a databases of faces you don't like.
this is why i make my code as unmodular and non-reusable as possible
... a more efficient means to kill more humans without disturbing the Generals dinner party
You mean the 3 laws of robotics aren't actual LAWS? We're fucked!
Just as the drone was closing in on the target it suffered a Blue Screen of Death moment.......
Something wrong with this statement.
It's no more complicated than keeping the web secure and we're aces at that, right?
I did some video analysis code a long time ago to track little beads sprinkled on a single muscle cell surface while and electric probe stimulated it (or caged ATP flashed released energy and it contracted. The beads moved with the surface and internal 'scaffolding' was modeled, etc. (Science publication: http://www.sciencemag.org/content/236/4807/1457.short ) This when Video capture was new and image libraries where (get_pixel_value(address) commands hand coded.) Loved it. But it has military applications..
That's as close as I would allow for moral reasons to military application, but manipulating a laser bean in 3D while tracking .. man, it's just a mater of scale and you have a targeting system and fire control. I'm still a little uncomfortable about it.. not that it would be used.
I considered some sorts of anti-drone device that would be DIY. I figure the right optics lens could allow 'inverted bowl shape' over the device to detect flying objects.. decide when to release a small 'missile' - just a really large 'estee type' rocket with a 'warhead' packed with a charge and ball-barrings or Paint (to cover optics on target,) or both.
Laser track object (find in sky and direct a laser in that direction) and rocket with laser filter quad light sensor to guide it to target. Head contains a 'flux magnetometer' which detects metal near and then detonate. Within the missile head is wrapped with coil for flux-gate, shape and size of coil will determine detonation distance, and add to the shrapnel.
This is 'off the shelf' stuff. The optics to cover the bowl above might be the most challenging part, it must be good enough optics to direct a narrow bean over it. I suppose to do it right a feedback system is needed. Mapping for accuracy step needed.
Still. Coding aside, it all stuff you can by or make with a basement shop. And the coding - well, it's the kind of challenge I use to slobber over..
Anyway. There's a DIY project for someone.. well, about 5 actually, but combined - drone defense.
Now, that is a weapon system that might be morally acceptable, except it could be used to take down a plane and would all sit nicely in the back of a pick-up. So even that application could be turned into an amoral killing machine or people. But so can a kitchen knife.
Damn - so interesting as to be a 'Moral Risk'. Stay far away - some battles are won by not doing them.
The subject of autonomous drones that can kill (the "kill decision" is no longer in the hands of a human that examines video from the drone and tells it to fire remotely) was explored in the book Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez (also wrote Daemon).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kill_Decision/
Already exists. The methods that would be deployed for "killer robots" could be avoided entirely with mind reading technology and AI, that focuses on less violent means to end conflict between people. Mind reading technology first allows conflicts to be identified by monitoring of peoples thoughts, intentions, emotions, and nerve impulses from afar, then, it also allows all parties minds to be examined to find a resolution that will work for peaceful conflict resolution, WITHOUT the need to kill a person.
If a person was however intent on murder or "terrorism," a peaceful capturing and "therapy" regime is first recommended, without need to do assassinate or otherwise hurt them. If a person was uncooperative, damn.. popular opinion might have that person permanently isolated and imprisoned, or if human rights were not respects, killed/terminated.
The problem today, is that the government does have this technology in place, which I have confirmed through an employee at a big US military contractor. I was also a target of psych experimentation and warrantless surveillance with this technology during a major US Department of Justice investigation that started in Oregon in 2006 and is ongoing today. There are numerous patents that go with this technology, and most of it has been possible since the advent of computers and long-range imaging devices like satellites. Today, our government is primaily using it to target civilians and others, .. but government agents are immune from prosecution, and they usually use these systems to commit abuses, rapes, and mind control sabotage. I wish for the system to be used equally to weed out government crime, and not just used to target the public in secrecy. That will ensure true justice equally across the board.
They also are using a skynet like program and AI to analyze every bit of data, thoughts and communications of people, which the NSA is collecting and capable of collecting and has been exposed as doing since at least 2001. It is seriously being done automatically for them. The human operators get the last say in what happens. This has been confirmed by NSA whistleblower Russell Tice in numerous interviews and information leaks, as he says their systems weed through all data and information for them before pumping out the information for the operators to see. He also describes people being targeted with space capability and Signals Intelligence, which would probably include the capturing of brain signals for their BCIs (they refer to this technology as Remote Neural Monitoring/Electronic Brain Link/synthetic telepathy). There is a full patent for reading and decoding these signals so that operators can track things about people without their knowledge or consent, which was filed in 1998.
details about all this here: http://www.oregonstatehospital.net/d/russelltice-nsarnmebl.html
Robots will be, could be used.. if everyone wanted war with each other. But it doesn't have to be that way, as we can avert any further violent conflicts through global unification and world-wide peace through the United Nations or another treaty. Humans should focus less on targeting each other, and more on protecting each other as a whole, using public peaceful surveillance methods and conflict resolutions. We should abandon spying on other countries in secret, except for methods to confirm compliance with existing treaties, and to ensure peaceful operations. Average every day citizens in each country would be possibly subject to new court systems and procedures which utilize mind reading technology to do detection and prevention of crime, and everything could be done to prevent abuse and criminal activity, with focus on treatment and resolving matters rather than punishment and imprisonment. The best thing about mind reading tech, is it lets observers practically guarantee that a person had done something (due to observation of memory), had thought something, or had feelings o
Because we built them to kill foreigners. That's their mission. If they kill the wrong foreigner, yes that's a bad thing, sure. War's sometimes sloppy and it's part of the military's job to minimize collateral damage, right right, most human beings would prefer not to murder anyone unnecessarily. OK.
But if they kill someone who is entitled under US law to have a day in court, that's a hell of a lot further off-mission than killing the wrong foreigner, see? It's off by a mile instead of a micron. Naturally we're worried about the larger error! I'm totally serious and mean no disrespect. You have my sympathies.
BONUS INFO: If you are in a third world country and the USA is blowing up putative evil-doers left and right, be sure to spray-paint the outline of an AK-47 on all your enemies' cattle and rooftops. Let the drones work for you! Fold the stencil into thirds when you're not using it, or you might draw fire. And don't mark the local churches and schools, please?
I want to meet the person who sits at a computer and thinks,"This is what I wanted to grow up to be." Who thinks this is okay? Who is creating these nightmares?
Already exist. In our human behavior for one as part of instinct. As part of learned moral code. As part of operational orders such as rules of engagement. Simply codifying them and allowing a machine to do it isn't necessarily a bad thing. For one it takes away the negative mental effects it must have on human operators to have to make such life and death decisions.
What we are really talking about is A) how well can it be coded, and B) avoiding potential mistakes, like "Kill all Humans!" or " All Humans must Die", or more serious making a distinction between soldier and non-combatant (assuming there is such a thing in the distant future).
As war had taught us anything (and apparently it hasn't) Humans are perfectly capable of making mistakes and fucking that up all by themselves. Friendly fire happens all the time, and I can't give you a statistic, but it is a significant amount of issue and always has been. Civilian casualties particularly in urban centers has also been an issue since such things as urban centers have ever existed.
At least if a machine is doing it, it will do it in a consistent, and discoverable way that is hopefully correctable, and not because some soldiers get mentally messed up by all the stress that putting people in those situations is bound to produce (or trying to desensitize them by making the enemy appear subhuman).
Hopefully in the future all wars will be fought by autonomous robots, fighting other autonomous robots, who once they kill off all the opposing robot forces simply send a C3PO type representative to the defeated leadership to tell them they lost the war. I would imagine it would even make for pretty good TV (and betting opportunity: Go 23rd Fighting Heavy Mech Robot Battalion!).
"4 legs gooooood, 2 legs baaaad!" :)
Algorithms have been killing people for years. There are anti missile systems which target according to their threat assessment. Systems have been developed which require a dead man switch once armed, if the operator dies the system takes that as permission to kill anything that looks like a threat and can't convince it otherwise. This horse left the stable decades ago.
At the moment there are automated weapon systems, see sentinal robots guarding the DMZ in Korea (http://www.army-technology.com/news/news90631.html, http://www.dailytech.com/Guntoting+Sentry+Robots+Deployed+In+South+Korea/article19050.htm) Now mix this type of technology in with another emerging technology (http://rt.com/usa/expanding-facial-recognition-capabilities-629/) set a target parameter unconscious or kill and now you have a scary autonomous system, strictly for defence purposes right?
What to do?
Know your algorithms.
Authority questions you. Return the favor. -- d474
So many things make me doubt this:
1.) Look, ma, fratricide!
2.) We got him, he's a turncoat, whoops forgot to take him off the list...
3.) My son just looked like Osama, it wasn't really him! (I mean, really how hard is it gonna be to sell that to the media in the post-wikileaks era?)
4.) Current ROEs (rules of engagement) for live _human beings_ are so restrictive that sometimes when taking fire they have to check if they can return fire, so why would anyone expect someone to let loose a killing machine which can have a hard time telling where one human ends and another begins in a crowd much less see through a half-assed disguise? (and hey, it's not like lots of the people who have worked hard to be on kill lists have beards or can grow them, or are dumb enough not to smile for a facial recognition photo)
5.) You'd better hope your hackers (crackers/white/black hats, I know but you know what I mean) are better than theirs, otherwise you just gave the enemy a really neat toy.
6.) PR. You try being the guy who has to admit, "yes, he was killed because of a software bug in Microsoft Orifice Rampage 2015, Mr. Chairman." You'd see a legitimate anti-military tidal wave of opinion overnight.
So yes, while it's possible Russia or China might be developing them, Darktroopers are unlikely to be deployed from a US source (although advanced targeting acquisition and identification algorithms that merely display something like "99% match to Osama" to an operator are likely to come in vogue).
Just the thoughts of a guy who's thought about the ramifications of creating one of these things. And no, I don't mind that the NSA is reading this one lol.
Ok, gang, listen up! We are smart people. Let's put our heads together and make some plans to respond to this threat. We can do it!
First question: when the expected platoons of powerful, high-speed autonomous killer robots approach, should we maybe, um, throw eggs? Call the mayor's office? Stand still with flowers in our hair and dare them to run us down? Get out our handguns, shotguns, rifles, assault weapons and then shoot, shoot, shoot?
I don't know how to break this to you. But look, there is absolutely nothing any of us can do about this. Countries do not deploy weapons in such a way that others can do something about them. They deploy weapons to intimidate other countries (and, indirectly, their own people) into doing their bidding. It is a plan that works every time. And it is a key part of the plan that no on can say "no" to the country that is deploying the weapons.
Here is my suggestion: relax and try to enjoy the remaining time each of us has. That might be fifty or sixty more years, or it might be a day or two.
And, of course, if you can think of a better response, please let me know.
Sigmund
Step 1) Come up with algorithmic mechanisms for defense and get machines to fight each other, no human deaths
Step 2) Then realize that machines are also unnecessary and have algorithms fight each other in virtual environments
Step 3) Realize that algorithms are unnecessary, too. Have programmers fight directly each other in topcoder tournaments and winner is the world leader!
That's all fine and dandy until the enemy has automated killing machines too, ergo their machines will kill faster than yours because you had to wait for human to push a button.
By all means, include it in the Geneva convention, but why not ban all wars? If any country attacks another they must know that the whole world will invade them and remove the government, no debate. What you need is countries to sign up to certain good governance ideals, and as long as they follow these they are assured that they will be defended if another country attacks them. The arms race is not sustainable. Countries are buying their clout. The biggest gorilla dictates and bullies other countries into co-operating. Lets stop this madness that has carried on for thousands of years and start focusing on preserving the environment and improving people's lives. Imagine, all that money currently wasted on weapons could be put to many good uses.