Slashdot Mirror
US Army 'Will Have More Robot Soldiers Than Humans' By 2025, Says Former British Spy (express.co.uk)
John Bassett, a British spy who worked for the agency GCHQ for nearly two decades, has told Daily Express that the U.S. was considering plans to employ thousands of robots by 2025. At a meeting with police and counter-terrorism officials in London, he said: "At some point around 2025 or thereabouts the U.S. army will actually have more combat robots than it will have human soldiers. Many of those combat robots are trucks that can drive themselves, and they will get better at not falling off cliffs. But some of them are rather more exciting than trucks. So we will see in the West combat robots outnumber human soldiers." Daily Express reports: Robotic military equipment is already being used by the U.S Navy and Air Force, in the shape of drones and autonomous ships. In April robotic warfare took a major leap forward after the U.S. Navy launched its very first self-piloting ship designed to hunt enemy submarines. Drones have been a feature of U.S. operations in the Middle East to disrupt terrorist groups. However, those aircrafts are still controlled by humans operating from bases in the U.S. Mr. Bassett also said artificial intelligence and robots technology would combine to create powerful fighting machines. The cyber security expert said: "Artificial intelligence, robotics in general, those will begin to mesh together."
well.... Asimov's robots did plenty of killing as well. just admit it, robots are evil :)
US will have more bad AI-predicting pundits than sane people by 2025.
Table-ized A.I.
$3T blown on Ireq didn't work
Table-ized A.I.
When all armies are made of robots, it will be senseless for them to fight each other. They will then be used to attack civilians.
And I laugh as a deployed active duty USAF member. Hahahah, no.
by 2045. I find that even scarier than robotization of military. That island is "royally fucked".
Just recently I listened to the old radio show X Minus One's adaptation of Philip K Dick's short story, "The Defenders" which is appropriate to this story. In the story a brief nuclear war forces nearly everyone on the planet to live underground while robots continue the fight and the nuclear bombardment on the surface. Unknown to the humans, the robots figured out early on that the war was really stupid, so they stopped fighting and began to repair and renew the world, all the while sending fake war reports back to the humans and telling them that the radiation levels were toxic, when in fact there was no radiation left. Very interesting story.
Here's hoping that if every nation and group in the world starts making robots to fight for us, maybe the robots will realize how stupid this all is and refuse to listen to us until we all come to our senses.
Exactly. The purpose of a robot army is to make it easier to start wars, and because they'll be controlled by a small number of psychopaths, there won't be any of this business of refusing to obey illegal orders, refusing to fire on civilians, etc.
The sad part is a lot of the public is going to believe the propaganda about this saving troops' lives, etc. You want to save troops' lives? Don't let them be used in illegal wars for corporate profits. That costs a lot less than robots.
When all armies are made of robots, it will be senseless for them to fight each other. They will then be used to attack civilians.
More civilians will suffer but probably only indirectly either as collateral damage (in much the same way as drone strikes today kill innocent civilians while targeting terrorists) or because the US will get involved in far more situations than it does today. Unlike humans where every casualty has a negative impact on votes, every destroyed robot means more money for the companies making them which means more money for politicians which means more votes.
there is no reason for them to be humanoid.
I used to think this, but thought about it a while and realized that a robot with humanoid form is a drop in for all the existing infrastructure. It may not be as efficient as a dedicated machine, but it will turn a manual mill into a cnc mill, any car into a driverless car, etc. And there is still plenty of non-automated infrastructure around.
Yeah, as cool as that might be, good luck with that. Unless by robot soldier they mean an RC vehicle with a gun strapped to it. When they say robot soldier I'm thinking terminator style endo skeletons with glowing red eyes, a phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range and the lot.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
$3T blown on Ireq didn't work
I'm assuming he means Iraq, and say what you want about the aftermath, but militarily speaking, they got stomped into the ground and then we jumped on the bits til we got blisters.
No, he clearly said Ireq. We did so badly in the "Ireq" war our government doesn't even want us to know that the country exists. It's like when Britain lost Sodor's war of independence and was forced to start calling the Fat Controller "Sir Topham Hat", we were supposed to forget we once disdainfully referred to that dictator as "fat".
"That's the way to do it" - Punch