Killer Military Robot Arms Race Underway? 332
coondoggie writes to tell us NetworkWorld is reporting that one researcher seems to think that a military robot arms race may be imminent between both governments and terrorists. "We are beginning to see the first steps towards an international robot arms race and it may not be long before robots become a standard terrorist weapon to replace the suicide bomber, according to professor Noel Sharkey, from the Royal United Services Institute Department of Computer Science. [...] Currently there is always a human in the loop to decide on the use of lethal force. However, this is set to change with the US giving priority to autonomous weapons - robots that will decide on where, when and who to kill, according to the professor."
Humans are still in the loop (Score:2, Insightful)
Nonsense (Score:2, Insightful)
Blowing stuff up is:
- Easier
- Cheaper
- Faster
- Harder to detect in advance
- Scarier
Maybe if I could take control of robots the military creates it would be worth some effort. But why bother? They're already something we should all be scared of: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/19/sa_gun_death_probe/ [theregister.co.uk]
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:5, Insightful)
Obligatory (Score:3, Insightful)
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey 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.
(and ps: yes I know these are just fictional but I can't pass up a chance to quote the master...hell he even invented the word Robotics!)
Probably not (Score:4, Insightful)
Gundam Wing talked about this. (Score:5, Insightful)
humans out of the loop for a while now. (Score:4, Insightful)
Remote controlled? Yes. Autonomous? No. (Score:4, Insightful)
This short article seems to do little more than stir the FUD pot.
If you want to talk about having unmanned, remote control vehicles, some of which require little more than occasional supervisory control most of the time, I'm with you. We have them already, and more are in development all over the world. Expect to see lots more of them come about in the near future. As alluded to, this will be the robot arms race.
Terrorists using remote controlled devices to deploy and detonate bombs? Sure. It's not all that hard to believe that someone with some decent technical skills can put together a remote control kit on a full-sized car, then strap explosives to it (for example).
But c'mon. Killbots that can think and function completely on their own? ...and be effective enough in its mission to justify the costs of deploying it in lieu of something remote controlled by a human? Such a device is still a ways off for the U.S. Military, let alone some terrorist organization.
Futurism isn't (Score:5, Insightful)
2) I imagine fear of friendly fire will keep handlers at the controls of robots for quite some time.
3) I think there have been a few robotic sentries made that act autonomously but constantly report and can be overridden (S. Korea, perhaps?)...
4) Unsettling thought the implications may be, eventually I think robotic, autonomous war machines will be built - and for the builders, it will be quite a plus. Probably a bit of a downer for everyone else.
It may be seen in retrospect as another of those "Roman Conquest" moments where a powerful, advanced culture stomps all over more primitive cultures - but the survivors end up better off, at least for a while. History, like sausages, is a process whose benefits are better (more comfortably) enjoyed than understood.
Re:Cats and newspapers (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Probably not (Score:3, Insightful)
I see sex robots as appealing to people with a blow up sex doll and too much money.
I won't be surprised to see them arrive, but I'm skeptical they are going to be received as much more than ridiculously expensive sex toys. And sure a lot of people use sex toys, but I'm skeptical how big the market for a multi-thousand dollar sex robot is really going to be.
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:3, Insightful)
I agree with this, for the most part. The only reservation that I have with it is that when you compare wars in the middle east (includes the Iraq/Afghanistan wars and Desert Storm) to wars in America's past history, hardly anyone has been killed (again, comparitively). Granted, there have been many MANY casualties on the American side, but not really all that many KIAs.
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:4, Insightful)
As for recruiting, the USA has been demonized by terrorist groups, and unfortunately the US has given lots of recruiting ammunition with Iraq and the problems there. Combine that with a lack of communication of all sides of the issues, a large uneducated population, and a fundamentalist religious group that makes fighting and dying "holy", and there is little chance of the terrorist groups running out of recruits.
I develop these systems, this story is 4 pageviews (Score:5, Insightful)
First, very few robotic systems in the whole world right now are even weaponized, yet we're supposed to believe automated killing is "just around the corner". Second, no military anywhere has deployed fully automated (no human on trigger/joystick) weaponized systems ever, yet we're to expect legions of them very soon. Third, "terrorists" will supposedly get their hands on these systems and reverse engineer them to their advantage - do I even need to explain how improbable this is? Military and private research funded to the tune of billions haven't even been able to develop these systems yet, but we're supposed to believe some terrorist organizations with almost no funding and little access to high-level engineers will be able to understand and rework these same nonexistent systems. Is it impossible? No. I don't doubt that given enough time eventually some extremist group will have a CS PhD/MS level member who could figure something out. That still doesn't negate the fact that no groups have even captured and reverse-engineered current robotic systems, which are much less advanced than this alleged future autonomous platform would be. And finally, if one of the major world governments developed and deployed fully autonomous armed robots, does anyone really think there wouldn't be a remote shutdown/disable sequence or other back door?
It's fun to discuss possible dystopian Terminator style futures, but it annoys me to no end when some researcher or professor says we're all imminently doomed and the net runs away with the idea. We're still very far from fully automated systems with weapons. Even US tanks, which have highly advanced target acquisition and recognition systems, aren't fired except by a human operator. You'll see fully automated targeting and firing in manned vehicles long before you see it in unmanned platforms IMHO.
And to stem off people who point out that many UAVs fly totally unmanned, with weapons, and with no joystick control - there are multiple ground operators constantly monitoring and updating mission parameters for each of these UAVs, also all firing sequences are still human in the loop.
Re:Gundam Wing talked about this. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Cats and newspapers (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:I develop these systems, this story is 4 pagevi (Score:2, Insightful)
What will Nevada casinos pay? (Score:3, Insightful)
Imagine a means to all but stop child molesting, by allowing these perves to molest a robot child. I will say that this actually concerns me in that it might not be enough for these kind of ppl. It MAY make things worse, not better. But we probably ought to try and see.
Terrorists don't make 155 mm artillery shells... (Score:4, Insightful)
Terrorists don't make 155 mm artillery shells or munitions of any type. They rig what's available and hence IED, VBIED and other such improvised weapons are based on the highly available and cheap unspent munitions. Therefore it's not inconceivable that if sufficient "modern" militaries use robots in the future terrorists will be fashioning their new weapons out of those pieces instead. It will not be as good as the original, they're not going to build them from scratch nor somehow innovate since there's no need to. Just like their current versions of improvised weapons it'll be what they can slap together to at least scare if not also do some harm. It sounds crazy but I can see militaries in the future abandoning the "robot casualties" in war before learning how they can be used against them. After all, we don't seem to learn much from history and it'll likely be much like weapons caches left behind in past wars and other mistakes from a lack of foresight on our part.
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:4, Insightful)
Teenage angst? Mid-life crisis? Clinical Depression?
Does anyone think that the middle east doesn't have something equivalent.
I'm not so surprised that they have an influx of recruits regardless of what the US was doing.
It's important to remember, suicide bombing has been going on longer than the time the US has been in the middle east.
It will probably continue as long as someone over there is mad enough about something.
War, politics, technology, religion, cartoons, maybe skin color. They seem to have a lot of material to go on.
Re:Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
Well in a battle between a nation-state's military and a guerrilla force, "sophisticated" is relative and the arms race can be neck-and-neck while both sides still operate at completely different levels of sophistication.
Look at the arms race between the IEDs used by insurgents in Iraq and our army -- they go from simple stashes of explosives buried under ground, to re-purposed mines in stacks to even shaped charges, while we go from armored Humvees to MRAPs. They're still basically using cobbled together piles of high explosives, while we're using extremely expensive vehicles, and we're trying to come from behind in this race.
Or the terrorist equivalent of our cruise missiles -- an old station wagon stuffed with explosives and driven by a would-be martyr.
Similarly, a "sophisticated" robot or the terrorists might be a wheeled pallet with a simple electric motor and some kind of remote control (even a thin wire based one to prevent jamming or source tracking like they do now with IEDs) that can carry a pile of explosives into the line of police recruits or next to the checkpoint. While our robot has to be something with complicated vision and maneuvering and fire control systems, and that might put the two robots on somewhat equal footing.
Of course in the absolute sense of terrorists actually trying to match the technology we deploy, that's simply insane, just as much as it is for them to use APCs or cruise missiles when there are much simpler but from their standpoint equally effective methods. In this sense you're absolutely right.
Also, I'm with you on having autonomous guns that make their own decisions on when to fire is a very bad idea. You can have the robot decide how to shoot, even exactly when and where. But the question of whether the robot shoots at all should be decided by a human.
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:5, Insightful)
I think the fact that the initial campaign on Baghdad was called "Shock and Awe" was a pretty big give away. I mean, isn't that exactly what terrorism is? Shock and awe? A quick, violent, show of force with plenty of collateral damage which is intended to demoralize your opponent.
War: Well funded acts of terrorism.
Terrorism: Poorly funded acts of war.
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:5, Insightful)
Those kinds of stresses inevitably lead to the mental break down of individuals making them far more susceptible to those who would manipulate them into self destructive behaviours. Of course the worst thing about that kind of sustained flagrant abuse, is it will create a generation of people and take decades to resolve.
The track record for creating terrorists/freedom fighters by this route of invasion and brutal occupation, is pretty much rock solid, with genocide (the substantial eradication and eviction of the indigenous population) being the only way to resolve the situation (the current choice ?), other than of course getting the fuck out, paying reparations and making sure all those who committed crimes during the occupation are caught, prosecuted and convicted (it only makes sense as you really do not want these deranged individuals back in the general population without extensive rehabilitation).
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:3, Insightful)
The final nail in the coffin for democracy (Score:2, Insightful)
Whether there is a man in the loop or not, this is a dangerous development for the future of democracy. The ability to project force with fewer people in control means that it becomes easier to have a smaller military force of elites, who can be more easily controlled by an undemocratic government. With the U.S. government in particular, we already see in Iraq and Afghanistan a movement toward using private mercenaries. Without these mercenaries, the current level of force could not be maintained without a draft.
Now no one wants to be drafted, but a draft does have the advantage of populating the military with a broad cross-section of society. Such a force would be much less likely to tolerate being used to suppress a popular revolution if the government which commands them should go rogue. With mercenaries, and especially with mercenaries whose force is multiplied through robotic systems, you have a force motivated by money rather than allegiance to the Constitution.
So who wants to enlist first? Yeah, me neither. But we better vote wisely while we still can.
Re:What will Nevada casinos pay? (Score:3, Insightful)
Knowing they are really just masturbating with a sex doll that will be enough to turn most people off the whole idea. If the expense hasn't.
Sure it might do well as a novelty in Vegas as another entertainment diversion, but as a substitution for prostitutes or even just casual promiscuity/infidelity? I'm unconvinced.
After all, it is not sex, it is masturbating with a sex toy. In fact, this will probably help prevent much of our slave trade that occurs ALL over the world, even here in the west. Probably 80-90% of all slavery is about sex.
Precisely, its not sex and that's how most of us will feel about it. So if we want real sex, this doesn't deliver the emotional/mental/cerebral satisfaction. Sure we might get off, but that's probably not really the issue.
People have been able to 'pretend' they were cheating, 'pretend' they had a sex slave, 'pretend' a lot of stuff... but that hasn't diminished the demand for the 'real thing'.
Imagine a means to all but stop child molesting, by allowing these perves to molest a robot child.
I think this would backfire. I think even you realize that.
Also consider this: the ability for 18 year old prostitutes to dress up and pretend to be 14 year old schoolgirls hasn't eradicated child molestation of actual 14 year old girls; so I'm skeptical that even contemplating a reduction in child molestation is warranted.
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:3, Insightful)
As long as we're in Iraq (and making an absolute mess of it), we're providing impetus to breed more terrorists.
You cannot eliminate terrorism without addressing the underlying causes. There is no vast underground terrorist network. Just a lot of very pissed-off individuals.
Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad (Score:2, Insightful)