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Pentagon Chiefs Fear Advanced Robot Weapons Wiping Out Humanity (mirror.co.uk)
Longtime reader schwit1 writes: Huge technological leaps forward in drones, artificial intelligence and autonomous weapon systems must be addressed before humanity is driven to extinction, say chiefs of Pentagon
From a report: Air Force General Paul Selva, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the US Defense Department, said so-called thinking weapons could lead to: "Robotic systems to do lethal harm... a Terminator without a conscience." When asked about robotic weapons able to make their own decisions, he said: "Our job is to defeat the enemy" but "it is governed by law and by convention." He says the military insists on keeping humans in the decision-making process to "inflict violence on the enemy. [...] That ethical boundary is the one we've draw a pretty fine line on. It's one we must consider in developing these new weapons," he added. Selva said the Pentagon must reach out to artificial intelligence tech firms that are not necessarily "military-oriented" to develop new systems of command and leadership models, reports US Naval Institute News .
From a report: Air Force General Paul Selva, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the US Defense Department, said so-called thinking weapons could lead to: "Robotic systems to do lethal harm... a Terminator without a conscience." When asked about robotic weapons able to make their own decisions, he said: "Our job is to defeat the enemy" but "it is governed by law and by convention." He says the military insists on keeping humans in the decision-making process to "inflict violence on the enemy. [...] That ethical boundary is the one we've draw a pretty fine line on. It's one we must consider in developing these new weapons," he added. Selva said the Pentagon must reach out to artificial intelligence tech firms that are not necessarily "military-oriented" to develop new systems of command and leadership models, reports US Naval Institute News .
Take your pills buddy.
On a second thought, don't, they might actually be what turned you into this smouldering wreck of a former human being.
I'm worried about the humans using the robots, legit or illegitimate.
Well, as long as we don't build robotic reloading systems, we'll have an upper limit on human population loss.
Surprised no one mentioned this yet. Why people think the Air Force guy is crazy is beyond me. Of course autonomous systems that kill are a threat to humanity.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Automated systems disrupt entire countries without being driven by financial gain or being otherwise power-hungry. I admit, that's kind of scary.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
joshua what are you doing?
once humans stop working, and the machines have taken over all their tasks, they are not needed anymore. All the billionaires need to do is to let robots clean up the planet from all this mess. Just let everyone with >= $1 billion alive, and you have exterminated poverty! In fact, everyone can be even richer and lead an even more luxurious live thanks to all this space becoming free!
Another, and I think larger, problem with the increased use of technology rather than human boots-on-the-ground is that it makes it easier, from a political standpoint, to go to war. You don't have mothers, fathers, and spouses of all those people being put in harms way making trouble because their loved ones are dying. This is one reason I'm a fan of bringing back the draft, without all the loopholes that allowed rich-white-boys (I'm looking at YOU, W!) to dodge serving. If your constituents have skin in the game, it's harder to vote on a war resolution.
leave Arnold out of this
As always the important thing is to have more well trained people that have some sense of morality than there are people and/or robots that will just go out and kill people without giving a shit.
It's kinda how the rest of us feel until we read the latest report from a Tesla autopilot exploit or remember that these things need electricity and fuel.
all it takes is a few nukes to end it all.
extending the level of autonomy of weapons systems to the level depicted in the Terminator franchise? The weapon systems are implied to be capability of operating for decades without human intervention, all the way back to the factories producing the equipment, the power generation to run them, and the retooling necessary to mass produce new designs. Even if that could become practical in the foreseeable future, would the military want it? Naval vessels could already be almost completely automated, but they're still filled with sailors to clean up the mess when everything goes to hell in combat.
... about 7 billion people find themselves in agreement with the Pentagon chiefs...
Log in or piss off.
"Worthless humans, reload my weapons or I'll target my last missile at you"
"OK"
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Why would an AI be automatically any worse in interpreting its programming instructions, than humans are in interpreting theirs?
If anything, robots may be more observant — as humanity's history of atrocities and war-crimes shows, the bar is not set very high...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Hey, you can't fight in here! This is a War Room!
Until repair/refuel/replenish is automated...you don't have to worry about more than a first strike. Of course, you aren't hooking the nukes up to these, are you? (nervous silence)
Human controlled semi-autonomous killing machines are the real threat, not fully autonomous killing mahcines.
Specifically, the most likely killer robot scenario is not a robot army attacking and killing all humans, but instead a Hitler/Stalin/Kim Jong Il/Suharto taking control of an army of robots and ordering them to kill people they think are their enemies.
Think a Star Wars episode I type event where a ruler orders military machines to attack.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Farming it out to the cheapest solution. The best part will be when these things kill people they aren't supposed to and we get the line, "Every new system is bound to have a few bugs." Which while true doesn't make me feel any better if I'm staring down the real world version of Skynet. The real kicker will be the Windows 10 sticker on the frame as I hear the click of the trigger.
Welcome our robotic overlords.
Probably autonomous weapons would be told to go kill everything without an IFF signal over there. What could go wrong that isn't already wrong by design?
Too bad the US hasn't signed the treaty against land mines.
To destroy the human species you'd need to wipe out every single city/town/village on the planet, in a single attack. That's a lot of nukes, more than actually exist (in total). Our current total could certainly destroy our civilization though, throw us into a new Dark Ages for a few centuries, but so could Donald Trump.
It's a legitimate concern in an all out arms race that someone will let AI guided weapons make their own attack decisions if only to circumvent the decision cycle of the enemies systems. It's not hard to end up with scenarios like Philip K. Dick's "Second Variety" or the movie Screamers (based on the book).
We have nothing to fear but fear itself! And Spiders!
IIRC Colossus Couldn't automatically reload it just so happened that it had more than one nuke.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Minimum threshold fixed. Thanks!
Ethics. From people who's job it is to kill people for money. Riiiiight.
Apparently the leaders of our military are as technologically retarded as our politicians, media, and pretty much 99.9% of humanity in general.
For the billionth time: We do not have sentient, self-aware, human-level, qualifies-as-a-lifeform 'artificial intelligence'. All we have is clever bits of programming that maybe learn things, but that are still just dumb machines your average dog or 5 year old child could out-think without much trouble. If they want to worry about something going haywire with their automaton-war machines, then they should worry about some hacker, foreign or domestic, managing to take control of a drone or robot weapon and turning it on our own people or using it to attack a civilian target, not 'Skynet achieving awareness' or any such Hollywood nonsense. At best we're decades away from anything approaching sentience and self-awareness in ways that actually matter, and that's only assuming that someone finally figures out how the human brain does what it does in the first place -- and we're nowhere near figuring that out yet anyway. Military people and everyone else just need to chill out. Try spending more time worrying about how to keep some of the jackass humans out there from blowing up the entire planet instead, much better use of your time and energy.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
Maybe Pepper will be B1-66ER ;)
Humans are very quick to throw ethics aside when there is power to be had. Building a conscience into a machine will only serve to make it potentially disobedient to the governments that are ordering it to go kill a bunch of people. Regardless of posturing, there is no way any government will stand for THAT.
"Communism is a lie."
"Death is a preferable alternative to communism."
"Communism is the very definition of failure."
"Chairman Cheng will fail...China will fall!"
"Voice module online... Audio functionality test... Initialized. Designation: liberty prime. Mission: the liberation of anchorage, Alaska. Primary targets: any and all red Chinese invaders. Emergency communist acquisition directive: immediate self-destruct. Better dead than red!!"
"Freedom... Is the sovereign right of every american."
"Embrace democracy, or you will be eradicated."
"Democracy is non-negotiable."
"Engaging red Chinese aggressors."
"Anchorage will be liberated."
"Commencing tactical assessment: Red Chinese threat detected."
"Communists detected on american soil. Lethal force engaged."
"Communism is a temporary setback on the road to freedom."
"Obstruction detected. Composition: titanium alloy supplemented by Photonic resonance barrier. Probability of mission hindrance... Zero percent!!"
"Initiating directive #7395: destroy all communists!"
"The last domino falls here!"
"Democracy is truth! Communism is death!"
"Red Chinese victory: impossible!"
"America will never fall to communist invasion!"
"Alaska's liberation is imminent!"
"Obstruction detected. Composition: Titanium alloy supplemented by enhanced Photonic resonance barrier. Established stratagem inadequate! Revised stratagem: initiate Photonic resonance overcharge."
Asimov was simply way ahead of everyone on this.
There are varying levels of ethical boundary. There are codes and there are guidelines. If you go against an ethical code you'll be seen as amoral. If you go against an ethical guideline you'll be asked for your wallet.
Now you should look at the good General's speech in this article. He says that these are ethical "considerations". That places them firmly in the realm of guidelines, not coda. This means that when the time comes, when it comes down to whether or not there are terrible ramifications to building an "unstoppable terminator", the people in charge will more or less give it some thought. Sorry if I have to explain this to anyone; it's just how the distribution of legitimized power works. You draw thin lines and thick heavy ones.
The second thing in the General's speech is the use of "fine line". This is a funny turn of speech in the military, in general. Because a fine line refers to a very scrutable detail. A line that clearly demarcates one side from another. But war-making is not about staying on the side of a line, it's about moving a line and advancing it towards a goal. The "thin lines" are dross, and the heavy ones represent stopping power.
"Stratigraphically the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear essentially simultaneous" -- Lee
He says the military insists on keeping humans in the decision-making process to "inflict violence on the enemy. [...] That ethical boundary is the one we've draw a pretty fine line on. It's one we must consider in developing these new weapons," he added.
I'm sure that's what he tells himself. As a non-techie, he might even be able to believe it. However, just about all hardware in existence has been experiencing creeping "AI" for decades. Does the pilot make every decision for the position of every aileron during flight? Of course not. There are lots of little decisions to be made in the piloting of aircraft and ordinance that are getting more and more computerized every year. At some point there will be anti-drone weaponry, and defensive weaponry on the drones, and when that day comes having to wait for an Ethernet packet to go from Kandahar to Virginia, a human to process it, and then back, is going to be seen as a mission-threatening liability. At that point they'll have the computer make the firing decisions too, but they'll justify it by saying the human's role was to start the mission in the first place.
Here's a question for you: When some other nation (eg: Russia or China) starts making these drones and deploying them over countries in ways we don't agree with, perhaps even over countries friendly to the USA, how is the USA going to feel about them then?
In the old Trek TOS there was an episode where they found a planet where large amounts of people just reported to extermination centers because the warring states' computers told them to based on their warfare simulations. As I get older, I'm finding that less and less implausible.
Just one question before I fly off the handle:
Can they actually get these things to work for longer than a few minutes? And, does the weapons make their own AMMO?
Come one guys, this isn't Hollywood. The ammo eventually runs out in real life, just like the fuel/charge.
I just watched this yesterday.
Step 1: Create automated theorem-proving software that adapts to its own machine-learning capabilities
Step 2: Teach it Tic-Tac-Toe
Step 3: ???
Step 4: world peace
You see, each killbot has a preset kill limit. All we have to do is send wave after wave of our own men at them until they reach that limit and shut down.
Yeah, people frequently quote facts like "Russia or the US has enough nukes to destroy the world 5 times over".
Even if that is true, they won't have the ability to fire all of them- they'll send off a dozen before all their launch sites would be nuked by the enemy. Even if they fired all of them- they're not going to fire them to cover the surface area of the earth, they're going to fire multiple at strategic sites.
Po Dunk, West Dakota, is not going to be a target. It makes no sense sending a $x-zillion rocket to target a town with a population of 700. Rural areas all around the world wouldn't be hit.
There would be survivors of any nuclear conflict. Maybe millions of survivors. It would suck to be a survivor, life would be really hard under a nuclear winter with all distribution networks destroyed. Humanity would survive though at a much diminished rate.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
The one that kills the robot. Figure it out. Implement. Watch the bots carefully, like you do your troops.
Is this so hard to do? Or do we not trust our military-industrial complex to do the right thing? Or our government?
Well, yeah, actually we don't, If we can see geofencing for commercial drones working, we can surely do that for military assault bots. And if not, then we need new leadership.
That may be coming. May.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
I liked the Bolo stories.
Autonomous weapons are not the issue, but the payload and applications. An autonomous, submersible nuclear ICBM launcher fleet might not be a very good idea, particularly given the tendency of humans to react by launching their ICB missiles as a "payback."
The scary thing is, the AI that wipes out humanity could be accidental.
Microsoft reboots Clippy after realizing Cortana is way too unpopular. It gives Clippy a superior AI.
"I see you are trying to wipe out humanity, would you like me to assist?"
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
1) The same people who want more wars will also oppose this policy change. It's no easier to pass than less-deadly ways to restrict wars outright (require 3/4 majority, end inflation, etc).
2) The draft is slavery. It was never a good idea in the first place. Raise progressive taxes and pay soldiers a fair wage so that they join willingly, don't just "tax" being young and healthy. Will you also prohibit rich white boys from getting full body scans to find anything that might disqualify them?
3) This is basically the same as the Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon", and the turd-polishing implications are the same.
4) Americans want to protect American lives, not send our children out to die so you can feel good about protecting the foreigners who started this conflict. Any war worth fighting is a war worth winning quickly. Atom bombs make things easier too, should we have sent our grandfathers to die in Japan?
This is by no means a complete list, just the first few obvious problems I thought of.
MOAR BETTER WEAPONS.
- Smarter
- Faster
- More lethal
It's what we need to beat the weapons!
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
To: General Selva
From: K. Trout
Did you ever consider in your "analysis" humanity wiping out humanity?
Yours In Novosibirsk,
K. Trout
If you haven't seen the counterargument, here you go.
https://app.box.com/WitthoftResume Code: https://github.com/cellocgw
...But I didn't see any references to Skynet, or even berserkers! What kind of automated war discussion is this!?
His concern isn't entirely unjustified. We're increasingly relying on robots to do the actual killing, but we've currently designed the systems so that humans need to be involved in the decision making.
Forget the military drones. (Or at least, they're a smaller component of the overall issue.)
We have computer-controlled cars. They will be deployed in massive numbers over the next ten years. If remote updates are possible, anyone who can update a popular model has access to a distributed weapon of mass destruction capable of causing hundreds of thousands of deaths in a matter of moments.
Warfare-oriented tech isn't the only vector for mass attacks.
Real lawyers write in C++
I read on the news, few years ago, about some bolivians drug-dealers, using small aircraft to transport drugs to Brazil. When the pilots from the brazilian air-force call the "invader" on the radio, telling that they will open fire if they not comply with the order to be escorted to a specific airport, the drug-dealers show small kids on the plane's windows. They know no one would authorize to take down a plane full of small kids, maybe neither the air-force pilot would comply with an order to take down the plane.
The AI would be able to recognize the kids inside the airplane ?
The AI would stop if the target is using some human shield like kids, or another kind of hostages ?
Absolutely. Kill bots have built-in kill limit, they shut off as soon as it is reached.
With thermal optics and laser weapons, I can easily imagine robots simply killing off people at their own pace, at a distance, maybe even very very far away.
It would suck to be a survivor, life would be really hard under a nuclear winter with all distribution networks destroyed. Humanity would survive
Only if they are not Nietzsche's Last Men
who was the idiot who said this? hahahaha
The general didn't express fear that robots would wipe out humanity (despite the Terminator reference).
What he did say was that autonomous weapons need to adhere to the same rules of engagement as humans.
Now personally if I was drafted I would see whatever forced me to takeup arms as the enemy and it would not end well (for me, or the officers mess)... But! Heres the important part, killing SHOULD be personal.. Some president somewhere tells the military to destroy/take some city/village there should be a human brain behind every kill; Is this 'right/wrong' and *I* am ultimately taking this action... If some orders cross the line it's up to the front line to refuse those orders.
With an automated military some leader can act arbitrarily killing thousands/millions w/o oversight from his command console.
There would be survivors of any nuclear conflict. Maybe millions of survivors. It would suck to be a survivor, life would be really hard under a nuclear winter with all distribution networks destroyed. Humanity would survive though at a much diminished rate.
Nice assertion, but we still might not survive. Starvation and disease could take the rest. Human-kind has been close to extinction before. We could make it there again. And maybe this time, not be quite as lucky.
That is all.
If the Enemy doesn't follow the same rules their robots/drones will be more lethal and more likely to win
Reminds me of Second Variety
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Variety
Gotta have something to defeat Skynet, amirite?
How you die and will release such weapons even if they die also.
Can you defeat these weapons or are you saying were doomed?
The Terminator comparison is a useful one in the following way. The problem with "the Machines" wasn't that they could kill without oversight, it was that they could self-replicate. If the military releases a bunch of autonomous weapons that run amock, they certainly have the capability to destroy said weapons. Lives lost, yes, but not an existential threat. Now, if the military is planning on setting up automated factories with automated Terminator guards and networking these factories with the drones and guards so the battlefield complement and guard station can be automagically expanded based on real-time situation, then we're screwed.
Outside of that, this is a play for increased funding, nothing more.
Right.
The last time the ecosystem hadn't been converted into farmland (which will be non-productive during a nuclear winter).
The population was (mostly) in balance with nature.
And everyone knew how to live off the land.
Doesn't sound very much like what we have today.
It is the US making the first nuclear weapon and actually using it and then again it is them that campaigning against nuclear arms race while having most of these in stock.
And Now, US is making robotic weapons and trying to throw another campaing for-anti robotic weapon campaign. Guess who will have most of these in the stock
I see a monopoly here!
I don't see how these killer weapon systems are going to cover the world and destroy us unless they have an endless supply of power and a limitless supply of ammo. Kinetic type ammo is heavy and bulky. I don't see your basic robot weapon system being able to do much damage before it runs out of projectiles. In fact, it shouldn't take much effort to get a robot to fire at false/worthless targets and burn up its ammo. Now, if they have a pure energy weapon like a laser then power alone is the limiting factor and a very major issue at least for the time being.
Robots will be very confused about this "law" think. The pentagon says it's important yet completely ignores it whenever they see fit. It's going to cause a lot of artificial headaches.
...look forward to our robot overlords.
Unfortunately... Some country that wants to take over at all costs might not care about such safety protocols in their AI. What if Hitler had automated drones... Do you think he would allow code to go in that would restrict the killing to require human intervention?
My, touchy, isn't he?
WATCH IT
*Worthless human now targeted by missile 1 of 5000 instead...*
They are trying to ascertain how much work still needs to be done. Read it again:
"Huge technological leaps forward in drones, artificial intelligence and autonomous weapon systems must be addressed before humanity is driven to extinction, say chiefs of Pentagon"
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
How much leverage is the Pentagon going to have at budget time by telling the public, "Support Our Troops" when those troops don't bleed anything but hydraulic fluid?
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
I'm wondering where that fine line is with RNM? With a program like that which deviates so much from the public face of the US, I don't think anyone would trust a single word from anyone in the defence dept.
Ed: "Ouch! Damn mosquitos. I thought we were too far from the lake to worry 'bought those things"
Fred: "Nah, it's them damn solar drones with the microbullets, they went rogue back in ought '18 and they just fire at whatever. Leaves quite a welt. If ya' squint you can see 'em up there, but I wouldn't on account of the microbullets stinging like a son-of-a-bitch when they git in your eye"...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
No.... all of the nukes combined would not destroy the world.
Meteror impacts have resulted in many factors more explose energies being released upon the earth, and although they are extinction level events, to be sure... they did not wipe out all life on earth, let alone destroy the planet.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
How do you know the US and Russia don't already have enough nukes up in space, to wipe out all life on Earth several times over? (and don't bother quoting the international laws aimed at preventing this...if it's possible to do undetectably, you can be sure that it already has been done)
Good luck stopping a nuke dropped from orbit.
Robotic systems to do lethal harm... a Terminator without a conscience."
How is this any different from the current situation. Between the US bombing anyone that so much as looks at them funny, to a significant part of the population that thinks a raving narcissistic lunatic would make a suitable leader for one of the most powerful countries on earth, (never mind the psychos running various other countries around the world) I think it's safe to say that having actual Robot Overlords would actually be an improvement.
>>>/b/ >>>/trash/
A few years ago I decided to begin producing a serial, including eventually posts to Facebook Notes and to my timeline regarding a partly machine encephalovirus, and what life would be like to exist with one. There is no level of insanity involved in my posts. It's a useful exercise, and it gets my creative juices flowing. Being a programmer can be a stressful life, and it helps to do different stuff.
What we really have to worry about when it comes to machine weapons systems are the ones that we can't see, weapons systems that can infect us like a virus. Particularly troubling would be an encephalovirus, a virus that infects our nervous system and eventually acquires the ability to change our behavior and our thought processes. The idea of nanotech has been explored in depth in science fiction, but most of the writers refer to nanotech as if it's some kind of utopia for humanity. My take is that it could be partly utopian and partly dystopian.
It would be possible for nanotech to become weaponized, and to even take over all human life, possibly without us knowing it. The wrinkle or twist in my writing is that I entertain the possibility of an alien race that may no longer exist that produced and possibly weaponized nanotech. This nanotech floated to Earth some time over the past few million years of mammal evolution, far before we had any technlogy more modern than the campfire, and it infected us, giving it plenty of time to become as stealth as possible.
Knowing that the modern human as it exists today is a machine hybrid is the topic that I explore. As human nanotech advances, once we detect our infection how do we go about getting rid of it, and what does it do to defend itself? Does it mean our destruction, can we learn to live in peace with it, or some other possibility?
Substitute an alien race for humanity a few generations from now, and you have roughly the same story, but I wanted to work with something that could be possible today without using with a presumed future human society. Roughly the same concerns as the general would apply.
... ...
Don't build them.
Perhaps? Maybe?
Just sayin'.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Autonomous weapon systems, while being an issue that needs consideration, are far less of a concern than autonomous job killers. Putting people out of work, without a means to quickly repurpose them at equal or better pay, is far more dangerous to a civilized society than the very primitive state of so-called "artificial intelligence".
The risks of families starving and being homeless are far greater than the risks of families being killed by military drones.
blah-blah, white-man's burden, blah-blah...
Not saying the west should pull out or that we are in a post-violence world, but it might be a good idea to step back and see if the west is helping or hurting.
Too often we are jumping in to protect our "interests" instead of helping the "situation". It may be we are doing too much short term reacting...
FWIW, the US Civil War wasn't really much about instability as it was a conflict over the future of the recently annexed territory and the power of the central government. The small guy lost in the end (after lots of bloodshed) their right to secede from the union and were basically adopt the institutions of the union. Is that what you are saying what happens when an uneducated population, is forced to turn to a "Democratic Republic" (e.g., the USA's current form of govt)? ;^)
It's so much clearer now...
The so called "peace" we have today in the west is of course illusory (as seen by recent events like Crimea). The waves of immigrants to Europe fleeing the *real* instability in Syria and the economically challenged countries the middle east is showing the cracks in European stability.
Let's face the sad truth, stability that everyone desires seems to only draw on the wealth of a nation. Given the current assortment of "wealthy" nations historically used mercantilism to create much of their wealth from these in-stable countries, is it no wonder that we continue to attempt to project stability in a region to protect our interests. But what of *their* interests? Hence we return to the white man's burden argument... ;^)
I hate to use China as an example, but it used to be a dumping ground for European and Japanese influence peddling (e.g., opium war, concession ports, forced trade, occupation, etc), until they managed to get everyone to leave them alone for a few decades. Sure it was brutal (great-leap-forward, cultural revolution, etc), but they managed to dig themselves out of a hole into some reasonable form of stability mainly because they simply got wealthier without interference. Now they look like they might take over the world. Perhaps this is what people fear the most and keeps the west involved in other countries...
How about we just get to the next stage where robots take on the other robots and we leave the human casualties out of this? When you're out of robots you need to surrender.
Surely mankind is at risk from intelligent killer robots only if we build them in the first place? Isn't a simple way to ensure that were not exterminated by them to just not build them? It is bad enough that in the 21st century nations on this planet feel the need to settle differences using force of arms. But to build killer robots is worse than insane. We've outlawed land mines, we're trying to get rid of nuclear weapons. Let's not add to the problem list, eh?
A robot with 360 degree motion detection and a gun is sufficient to be a danger to humanity, no? It doesn't require excellent AI or anything. Put a few of these at intersections in your town and see how quickly people hide underground or die...until they run out of ammo.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Currently. Probably not within 20 years. Possibly within 40 years, though, and if it could be averted by starting now that would be a good thing. I just doubt that this is the start of any such action.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I think the odds are much higher that our downfall will be directly at the hands of humans with human cognition behind it. AI as a threat might be the hip project to work on at the Pentagon amongst defense intellectuals but I doubt it's really near the top of the threat list. There's always the possibility that if I had access to a high level brief they'd scare the shit out of me with photos of the terminator factory in Siberia.
How is the military going to get the hardware to do that level of AI?
We don't have the chip fabs domestically to ram up the millions of units of cpus, controllers, flash and high speed RAM the US would need in a pissing contest with China/Russia or the EU.
Even if they did, the majority of other discrete components have been almost fully outsources, as has most of the battery technology (Does tesla have the capability of manufacturing individual lion cells, or do they just create whole units from chinese sources cells?)
In the event of WW3 I think we would find it to be a massive war of attrition based on pre-existing warehouse stocks, since the level of interdependency today for everyone except maybe china is quite high.
I was a kid when I saw the Terminator. It caused me to do a lot of thinking about autonomous weapons systems and the fear is completely justified.
The killing of human being should only be done BY human beings. There has to be some human cost to be paid by the killer. There are some things that a human being can flat out refuse to do.
Launch a missile at a parking lot full of baby strollers? No.
A machine will not question such an order and will do it without hesitation at the time or remorse later.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
I'm not aware that drones or robots are able to refuel themselves without any human action. So the moment they run out of energy, the robot revolution will be dead. Same goes for weapons, I'm not aware of a factory building bombs fully automated and auto-delivering them to an airfield to be robot-mounted onto the drones.
We just need to keep virus away from the nuclear weapons, but I doubt there's today a virus spreading via 8" floppy disks.
Atari rules... ermm... ruled.
The question is how long would the survivors, survive ?
civilization as we understand it would be destroyed, yes it would suck to be a survivor.
I find it highly unlikely that if anything that stupid happened it would be 'limited to a few dozen before launch sites are eliminated.
There are still Ohio-class submarines patrolling just one of these (24 MIRV-ed Trident SLBM) is way more that a few dozen.