Robot Rebellion Quelled in Iraq 317
opencity writes "The Register reports that the (perhaps inevitable) robot rebellion has been avoided ... for now. 'Ground-crawling US war robots armed with machine guns, deployed to fight in Iraq last year, reportedly turned on their fleshy masters almost at once. The rebellious machine warriors have been retired from combat pending upgrades.' Gizmodo also has a good photo."
Somehow reminds me of Asimov... (Score:5, Insightful)
One of the problems. (Score:5, Insightful)
That's not so bad when we are talking about automated warehouse trucks and similar robots, but when they are armed and constructed to kill it becomes something very serious indeed.
So you'll need a kill-switch, but not one that the enemy can use, so it needs to be complicated, but not too complicated because then it won't work when needed. Not an easy thing to do.
Oh, and there will be bugs in the machine. I have yet to write a single script or program that didn't have a bug in it. And I don't think I'm unique in this aspect. Now, do we really want to let loose a machine designed for killing that we don't have an easy way to shut off and that we know will have bugs in it?
where is the obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:One of the problems. (Score:3, Insightful)
There is nothing new about having lives depend on software.
Air traffic control, medical devices, nuclear power stations, space travel ... bugs in software in any of these can very quickly cost lives.
My point being, it's not impossible to achieve an acceptable level of safety in these cases. (Although it's expensive). So it's not necessarily impossible here.
One obvious feature ... which I would hope is in there ... is a physical rather than software safety catch on the weapon. Have it be possible to disable/enable it remotely, sure, but require the software to manipulate mechanical interlocks that are very visible.
Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir (Score:2, Insightful)
Thoughts on Robot Warriors (Score:3, Insightful)
On the one hand, I it is a Good Thing that robots can be used to fight instead of people, because, if a robot warrior gets destroyed, I won't feel nearly as bad as when a human soldier gets killed.
On the other hand, incurring human casualties and bad feelings when going to war is a Good Thing. The idea that one can go to war by sending the robots and not incur any negativity on the home fronts is really scary. Going to war _should_ be painful.
Re:Surplus availability? (Score:2, Insightful)
So how long before these are available at Army Surplus? I have some cute ideas for mods.
To be honest, this is a robot with a Fricking Awesome Machine gun, much MUCH cooler than sharks with lasers on their heads, what mods would u possibly need to add!
Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov... (Score:5, Insightful)
> robotics would be incapable of firing
> the weapon ever.
And that's how it should be!
Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov... (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, in all warfare the enemy is first made to look inhuman. Not only soldiers, but whole nations are bombarded with propaganda (i.e. brainwashed) about the horrible enemy and the necessity to protect their homes, families and way of life.
America is nowadays bombarded with anti-terrorist propaganda in much the same manner, and the way you treat your prisoners of war^W^W^Wcaptured enemy combatants suggests that you don't think of them as human either.
Therefore, in order to weasel out of these laws, robots would merely have to do the very same thing humans do.
Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:my question (Score:3, Insightful)
Um, exactly because of problems like this?
Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov... (Score:3, Insightful)
Asimov wrote more about theology than you probably have ever read. With all due respect, he could have nailed your hide to the wall in a theological discussion...
rj
These should be illegal (Score:2, Insightful)
It sounds great the idea of saving soldiers lives. But think about when our enemies have armed drones? When they have cheap, easy-to-build, lethal drones that a couple of rebels in the mountains can build with old computer and car parts?
Replacing a little gun with a bigger one (Score:5, Insightful)
So after reading the article and associated links, I gather that:
1. The U.S. Army commissioned Foster-Miller to modify their TALON remote-controlled vehicle to carry and operate various types of weapons. The modified vehicle is named SWORDS, and erroneously described as a "robot", although it is neither human-like in appearance nor autonomous in operation.
2. Some time later, the Army canceled the production order, citing an "unexpected movement" of a single test unit.
3. Simultaneously, the Army purchased, from the same company, a bigger, badder version of the same product [foster-miller.com].
Folks, this isn't a failed robotic uprising [theregister.co.uk]. It isn't even the over-reaction of a safety-conscious Army Executive [popularmechanics.com]. This is an excuse to kill a little project in order to start a bigger one.
Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:I thought, everything that could go wrong in Ir (Score:3, Insightful)
a) When lancet says 5-600,000 that they mean 500,000 to 600,000, when in fact it means 5.0 - 600,000. (ok a little tongue in cheek, but the lancet study was quite flawed, and significantly overestimated the number of deaths compared to every other study conducted.)
b) That coalition troops are the ones killing the civilians. This is important. While there are certainly collateral deaths due to american troops engaging resistance or perceived resistance, the majority cause of the deaths has been terrorists.
Further, if a guerrilla fires an rpg from the middle of a crowd and the return fire kills or maims members of the crowd, how can you reasonably attribute the casualties to anyone other than the guerrilla? He's the one that escalated the engagement up to "total warfare" rules.
Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov... (Score:3, Insightful)
1. I can sit in a tank turret, aim the Coax machinegun using the turret elctro-mechanical systems to point it at a target that I'm observing through an electronic imaging system and fire it and it's OK,
2. Connect the systems to a remote unit via an RF link rather than a hardwire and suddenly it's a "robot" and scary,
What the difference? This "robot" turned guns on it's fleshy comrades, operator error is much more likely; the guided missiles we've been shooting for half a century are closer to be a "robot" than this glorified RC car is.
Re:Somehow reminds me of Asimov... (Score:2, Insightful)
What you are describing sounds exactly like world war I and how it ended. Which in turn makes me hope that anything they hypothetically throw out their would be totally mindless for it's sake. Up to a hundred thousand would die in a single trench battle with only artillery, guns, and bayonets. It took the atom bomb in world war II to kill that many people in the same general time frame. It literally did not stop until Germany was sending in 13 year olds. The allied countries would have followed but there were like 6 of them to 3 axis countries..Numbers and higher ground were really all that counted
I guess we are due for a similarly horrific and wasteful conflict though, since we are again at that point where we dont really know how to utilize our new technology in combat (as this article quite deftly points out
Re:Simple Fix for bugs (Score:4, Insightful)