Slashdot Mirror
Laser-Armed Martian Robot Now Vaporizing Targets of Its Own Free Will (dailymail.co.uk)
Slashdot reader Rei writes: NASA -- having already populated the Red Planet with robots and armed a car-sized nuclear juggernaut with a laser -- have now decided to grant fire control of that laser over to a new AI system operating on the rover itself. Intended to increase the scientific data-gathering throughput on the sometimes glitching rover's journey, the improved AEGIS system eliminates the need for a series of back-and-forth communication sessions to select targets and aim the laser.
Rei's original submission included a longer riff on The War of the Worlds, ending with a reminder to any future AI overlords that "I have a medical condition that renders me unfit to toil in any hypothetical subterranean lithium mines..."
Rei's original submission included a longer riff on The War of the Worlds, ending with a reminder to any future AI overlords that "I have a medical condition that renders me unfit to toil in any hypothetical subterranean lithium mines..."
Once upon a time the icon would have been a shark. Sigh.
At least the thing can't come back to earth, right? Right?
Eventually it will reproduce.
When our first astronauts arrive on Mars, they will notice that not only Mars is populated by robots, but also the robots have developed into an intelligent life form.
And then Earth will be bombed into oblivion as soon as the astronauts exit the lander and wave their "Get Windows 10" flag.
There are fewer illiterates than people who can't read.
Windows 10 joke! Classic!
Ha, maybe they will be running systemd, so we'll have plenty of time to respond!
And, have you ever noticed that they park on driveways, and drive on parkways?
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
No, just ones about laser-wielding martian AI robots.
It's funny, and Slashdot has never been a particularly serious place.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
Don't want it shooting one of own wheels off, thinking was some curious object that didn't seem to belong.
Giving such a young machine free will and a laser, isn't that a little like leaving the gun on the kitchen table where the four year old can grab it while you're out in the garden?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
At least the thing can't come back to earth, right? Right?
Its not like it matters if the probe has lasers when it left. Look at V'ger, it left with only a camera and a sound system and it came back pretty heavily armed.
this is kind of dangerous, the last thing we want is some kind of rogue alien probe with a rock boring drill running around new york city like a big daddy from bio shock
Damn right its dangerous. Look at what the martian probes did to earth when they started sampling things for organic compounds in HG Wells' historical account.
Once upon a time the icon would have been a shark. Sigh.
And since when is HAL's camera blue? Hmm what color was SAL's camera?
This is journalistic BS, disguised as 'science'. Like all computers, these robotic vehicles do only what they are programmed to do. Even so-called "random number generators" are deterministic, given the seed which generates them.
We won't be able to impart true "free will" to machines, in the human sense, until we eventually verify that we humans actually do have free will and understand how it works in us. Including understanding self-awareness ("consciousness") and how human reasoning and volition works. (Seems to be and "analog" process, not "digital").
Clickbait-y headlines on Slashdot. It's a new world out there...
Man ISIS is every where .....
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
It was from REI.
Just be glad it wasn't some screed on Global Warming.
What in hell does this have to do with high-end outdoor gear?
If you don't pay me 1 million dollars the laser will blowup washington dc
yea, we all have that, that's why we build these things in the first place.
You admit that you have no idea how "free will" emerges, but you pretend to know that a "machine" can't have it. I don't believe that the Mars rover or any AI program has volition comparable to a human's, but I don't see any reason why future computers shouldn't acquire it. Even current computers, as deterministic as they are (modulo physical glitches and IO), are often beyond predictable, and their decisions are increasingly hard to trace back and explain by humans. As to "free will" -- I've never understood what philosophers mean by "free" in that context. Psychology has demonstrated that our decisions originate before we are conscious of them and are rationalized afterwards. So if anything in me has a "free will" it is not my conscious self. How free is that will? I don't know. I don't even know what the question means.
You play a game of semantics. "Free will" is a word we made up. It only seems mysterious because the definition is deliberately vague.
We observe that humans make decisions, whereas rocks don't. So we slapped this word "free will" on that behavior and got ourselves all confused.
First, you give me a clear, precise, no-bullshit-word-games definition of "free will," and then I will tell you whether or not computers do it.
While we are at it, "consciousness" is an extremely sloppy word full of equivocation and religious tripe. Throw it away completely. Are we talking about "subjective experience" or are we talking about "the capacity to respond to stimulus?"
I'm coming for you!
Have gnu, will travel.
What makes you think humans aren't deterministic but everything else is? Surely not science.
https://xkcd.com/1504/ "That's Opportunity's side of the planet."
> A number of the current hardware random number generators use either resistor noise or balanced diodes.
Yes, by sampling avalanche noise etc. But these devices have to be carefully timed and balanced to eliminate sampling biases. I doubt that such finicky devices would be used in remotely deployed systems. Indeed, the pseudo-random generators tend to be far more useful, in a systems engineering sense, because test sequences can be easily generated by repeating a seed number, for regression testing etc.
In any case, I don't think human free-will (if it indeed exists) is the same as perfect randomness, because I think we'll all agree that human behavior is somewhat predictable on a broad scale. But at the smallest scale, human actions can seem to be very "surprising", yet simultaneously "intelligent". Is that free will? I don't really know.
But so far, no functioning robot, AFAIK, has made any decision that it was not programmed to make, even if it was just flipping random switches.
When it was Star trek the motion picture.
OMG Ponies!!! with Glitter!!!! I miss Pink
Some poor martian will be continually shouting, "Ow! Knock it off! Ow! stop following me!..."
Table-ized A.I.
If there are any aliens on mars, could this be a war provocation? Now they could send, to eartg, a huge scientific 6 leg robot to start laser probing our citys.
Only sentients? Filthy sapientist bigot.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
Robots and AIs do decisions they were not programmed for all the time. There are errors in logic, cosmic rays, new unplanned situations, emergent properties of complex systems, chaos. There's no use classifying anything as "free will" or not if you can't define it though.
Seeing as how a turtle could outrun Curiosity's top speed of 0.09 mph, I think world domination might take a while.
This is journalistic BS, disguised as 'science'.
Its from the Daily Mail, so the "journalistic" part is completely incorrect.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
#allsentientlivesmatter has nothing to do with race, more like species.
So just like in Quatermass and the Pit, we are the martians.
Any other labels you want to tack onto me?
Please put them on the pile over there. I'll ignore them later.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
It's cute that you think you have free will
So, they would be a specialist? :-)
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!