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Russia Wants To Send A Gun-Shooting Robot To The ISS (mashable.com)
"Just in time for the rise in global military tensions, Russian officials have released video that's sure to calm fears all around: a death dealing humanoid robot that shoots handguns." An anonymous reader quotes Mashable:
Posted to Twitter on Friday by Russia's deputy Prime Minister, Dmitry Rogozin, the video shows the country's space robot FEDOR (Final Experimental Demonstration Object Research) accurately shooting twin pistols in a scene chillingly similar to images from The Terminator. But rather than being displayed as a not-so-subtle warning to the entire human population of the planet, Rogozin instead claims via Facebook that it's just a demonstration of the robot's dexterity and use of algorithms to execute tasks.
CNET quotes Russia's deputy prime minister as saying "We are not creating a Terminator, but artificial intelligence that will be of great practical significance in a lot of spheres." Russia plans to deploy the robot on the International Space Station by 2021, Mashable reports, adding "Hopefully, the robot's arrival on the ISS will come sans life-snuffing weaponry, which is pretty much the opposite of the intent behind creating a peaceful international space station shared by the world's super powers in the first place."
CNET quotes Russia's deputy prime minister as saying "We are not creating a Terminator, but artificial intelligence that will be of great practical significance in a lot of spheres." Russia plans to deploy the robot on the International Space Station by 2021, Mashable reports, adding "Hopefully, the robot's arrival on the ISS will come sans life-snuffing weaponry, which is pretty much the opposite of the intent behind creating a peaceful international space station shared by the world's super powers in the first place."
Because the press gave a big yawn when they announced this
Why would they want to give it the feminine version of the name? The robot itself doesn't look very lady like.
What century are you living in ? Cruise missiles (which result in no casualties for their user) have been used without hesitation for decades in situations in which ground troops would not have been sent. Similarly bombing missions are carried out against ISIS precisely because they don't have the necessary anti-aircraft defenses. Same with the more modern UCAVs. Arms manufacturers invest heavily in the development of unmanned weapons because there are expensive and useful to politicians who want to be able to do something without having to deal with the families of dead soldiers. War has been easy for a long time. If troops are indispensable then it is a bit harder but not that much given the ridiculously disproportionate casualty numbers between sophisticated and unsophisticated armies.
Cruise missiles and drone bombings do not substitute for ground troops. The GP is clearly talking about a robotic substitute for ground troops.
Very well; let this abomination unto the Lord begin!
Because things like tools,doorknobs,handguns,chairs/seats, etc are all designed for human body. A new design such as extra legs may not be compatible with a wide range of current human technology.
The ethical issue however is mostly the same. It push button warfare. One side can kill the other without facing death themselves. Machines still do the killing (whether a gun toting robot or shell on the end of a guided missile with an altitude trigger) at a remote site where there isn't a human been to look the other guy in the eyes and possible change its mind.
Consider the MOAB. We killed 36 ISIS 'fighters' were they all fighters or were two of them just guys ISIS grabbed and said "you'll be cooking our meals or we kill your family" those two hypothetical individuals are men who might have surrendered to ground troops when the position was eventually over run. Those are lives that might have been spared, instead they got incinerated like everyone else! Again this just my imagination it is probably more likely everyone of the guys hold up in those caves were committed Islamists determined to kill anyone standing in the way of their caliphate.
Maybe one day our or Russian 'terminators' will have capacity to capture or kill, hopefully by the time these are deployed in the field they will have enough visual recognition to see if someone is carrying what appears to be a firearm and shoot them and maybe not kill the the little girl carrying a bucket of water. That kind of target recognition is far from simple however. Maybe that isn't a bucket of water, maybe is a bucket of acid? Humans are somewhat good and figuring that stuff out, machines have a ways to go yet.
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We must actually be pretty close to being able to deploy remotely controlled ground infantry
I doubt it, I don't think we have anything that comes close to passing a military obstacle course. If you think of say an urban area and the task of the robot(s) is to secure a building it has to execute so many practical little details, just using a door handle is challenging outside the lab. The other big deal is stealth, if you look at the robots today most of them are quite loud with hydraulics and such so they couldn't sneak up on anyone. There's a reason all soldiers do hand signals and all that shit, if they just trampled in they'd be easy targets. Also jamming would be a big issue, it's not that hard to create a big noise generator that could be triggered by a trip wire or such. Outdoors a jamming device trying to bring down a drone makes you a big target to shoot at but in the basement of a building your robo-soldiers would be cut off without any easy means to restore contact. For sure robots could do more but I think we're dependent on humans in close proximity for quite some time to come.
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