Not Quite a T-1000, But On the Right Track 159
New submitter misanthropic.mofo writes with a look at the the emerging field of robtic warfare. Adding, "Leaping from drones, to recon 'turtlebots', humanity is making its way toward robo-combat. I for one think it would make it interesting to pit legions of robot warriors against each other and let people purchase time on them. Of course there are people that are for and against such technology. Development of ethical robotic systems seems like it would take some of the fun out of things, there's also the question of who gets to decide on the ethics."
Re:Sigh (Score:2, Interesting)
I think the sticking point that you might be missing is that we're reaching a point where it's in the mind of the public as conceivable, that we're getting to a point where robot autonomy is becoming more mainstream. There are certain ethical questions that go along with a program that is going from targeting something specifically to making decisions on potential targets. People see every day more and more advanced drones performing all sorts of little mini miracles of tossing sticks around and creating small structures that leads people to see a pattern of "higher function" for lack of a better wording and they are drawing lines into the future of "if robots can do THAT now, what will they be able to do down the road"
I think the future of robotics has very serious ethical concerns that should probably be addressed before they NEED to be addressed.
Re:Will sentient robots get the right to bear arms (Score:4, Interesting)
"AI" has always been that which AI can't do. Here are several activities that once were considered sci-fi-level AI but are no longer considered AI in a broad sense because we know how to do them more-or-less:
* Looking stuff up for us (Google);
http://www.google.com/ [google.com]
* Inferring questions from examples and answering questions posed in natural language (IBM's Watson);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watson_(computer) [wikipedia.org]
* Generating hypotheses and doing hands/grippers-on scientific experiments (Adam);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robot_Scientist [wikipedia.org]
* Reading text in multiple fonts reliably and quickly and cheaply;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_character_recognition [wikipedia.org]
* translating one human language to another on the fly;
http://domino.watson.ibm.com/comm/research.nsf/pages/r.uit.innovation.html/ [ibm.com]
http://www.gizmag.com/go/1833/ [gizmag.com]
* reading and translating signs;
http://questvisual.com/us/ [questvisual.com]
* Making portraits;
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2012/11/tresset_robot_artist_artist_engineers_robots_to_make_art_and_save_his_own.single.html [slate.com]
* Playing the piano including from sheet music;
http://www.synthgear.com/2009/music-misc/synth-playing-robot/ [synthgear.com]
http://gizmodo.com/5963137/watch-this-adorable-horde-of-intelligent-swarm-robots-play-piano [gizmodo.com]
* Driving a car in busy traffic (Google, Stanford, CMU, others);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge#2007_Urban_Challenge [wikipedia.org]
* Winning chess games (IBM's Deep Blue and pretty much any PC now against a mid-level player);
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess [wikipedia.org]
* Image recognition for quality control in factories;
http://www.general-vision.com/products/mtvs.php [general-vision.com]
* Recognizing faces;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_recognition_system [wikipedia.org]
* Figuring out the name of a musical composition from a few notes as well as making new compositions and dynamic accompaniments;
http://www.wikihow.com/Identify-Songs-Using-Melody [wikihow.com]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_and_artificial_intelligence [wikipedia.org]
* The diagnostic aspect of being a doctor (Watson again);
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/11/ibm-watson-medical-doctor [wired.co.uk]
* Investing in volatile financial markets;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Program_trading [wikipedia.org]
* Serving as a sentry with a machine gun;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v5YftEAbmMQ [youtube.com]
* Twirling a cell phone;
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation [hizook.com]
* Identifying things by smell;
Re:Robot wars (Score:4, Interesting)