February 16, 2005

• ps Make sure to watch the audio slideshow. "Autonomy" ??? !!! Enter the Matrix...
• Seems to me like the almost inevitable end result of the millenia-old tendency to combine technology and warfare. The English longbowman ended the reign of the mounted knight; the Kaiser's machinegunners ended the massed infantry charge, the backpack Stinger and LAWS ended the tank as the modern battlefield destrier, and this will end... something else. Perhaps it will be better that our robots fight their robots, than our soldiers fight their soldiers?
• Nevermind the "Robosoldier", we were warned long ago of the coming of the "Robocop!"
• I can't think of anything more demoralizing than to witness your countrymen being killed by machines. The ultimate sanitization on our side, though. And given the obvious ratio of the value of our/their lives, even if such a thing is less than discriminate, it would be judged a success.
• I mean of course the obvious ratio ascribed, given the tactics we see employed regularly.
• "I have been asked what happens if the robot destroys a school bus rather than a tank parked nearby. We will not entrust a robot with that decision until we are confident they can make it." Yeah, the humans seem to handle those decisions reeeeal well, what with all those civilian family homes and weddings they manage to bomb. Of course, this could lend a whole new sense of urgency to hardware hacking. How long would the robo-soldiers be in the field before insurgents start carrying them off, reprogramming them, and sending them back?
• How long until a means of disabling robots soldiers is created? Otr a means of subverting their actions top serve the eneies purpose? I think in the short run it just means more civilian casualties. Also of interest, this thread from last month.
• They don't get hungry. They're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Ahhhh yes...finally robots have replaced human attendants at fast food drive-thrus. How I prayed this day would come! What? Oh.
• Unbelievable. More killing tools. Well never stop, will we?
• What ever happened to Asimov's rules?
• No fancy brains yet - so it's an ideal way of side-stepping old Isaac's rules... Well I for one etc etc...
• Am I really the first to say "I for one welcome our robot soldier overlords" yes! my first web cliche"
• What ever happened to Asimov's rules? They're the 3 Laws of Robotics, GramMa. A bit more stringent than rules. 4 if you count the Zeroth Law that R. Daneel Olivaw extrapolated from the First Law. /pedant
• Sorry Uncle...just beat ya to it. If there's a cliche to be wheeled out, I'm your man.
• I never liked that about Asimov's worlds. Intelligent beings should be free to make choices and deal with the consequences. If that means kill-bots, then so be it. As for this robot, it'll get hacked. Pure and simple. Throw a tinfoil hat over it and watch it spaz out from lack of control signals. I'm sure they've thought of that and have a way to prevent it. I still like the image though.
• "Get the humanoid, got the humanoid" /Berzerk
• EMP for teh win! I wonder if the republicans government will be less willing to go to war now that it means losing very expensive robots rather than "cheap" american lives.
• For those not in the know, asimov's 3 laws of robotics:

  First Law: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. Second Law: A robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. Third Law: A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

  The zeroth law is A robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.
• I am totally disgusted by this whole business of 'robot soldiers'. What is to stop this country from going to war on a whim when the only loss to be concerned about is mechanical objects? Please remember that the countries we go to war with, and *have* gone to war with are third-world countries where the living conditions are close enough to slavery as it is. What honor is there in that? What? Do any of you think that supporting troops that largely murder civilians is *honorable*? Think about it. There is no honor in any of the 'military adventures' this country has perpetuated since the Korean war, and now we're happily cheering on those who would use a means to murder the disenfranchised, the downtrodden, those seeking freedoms that we take for granted as they are taken away day after day. As far as the 'hacker' argument goes, give me a break. I find it hard to beleive some third world inhabitant who has the most basic education is somehow going to become 'superhacker' and whip big, bad U.S. robotic military machines. Speaking for me personally, a country should never resort to a means of practicing warfare that will not ultimatly result in the sacrifice of it's own countryperson's lives for whatever gains they hope for. If you're willing to go to war with a country, you better be prepared to sacrifice the lives of your sons and daughters to do it, not play a damned video game that cuts you off more and more from the reality that you daily avoid beyond your shores.
• I started writing something on a similar vein earlier but gave it up because I couldn't say it right mk1gti. I completely agree that this reduces the already disproportionately low level of consequences for the global projection of US military power even further and would guess it will make the rush to a military solution to future conflicts even more likely.
• It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. it means losing very expensive robots rather than "cheap" american lives Actually, it's the opposite, according to this infographic that accompanies the article. SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System) costs $230,000 and "the median lifetime cost of a soldier is more than $4 million."
• If they're going to build these autonomous murdering machines, why not just take all the glitter off of them, build a giant building-size bucket tilted on it's side with a hole in the bottom feeding into a giant propeller blade mounted on a tank chassis. Send it down the street, sucking in human beings and spitting them out the other end. Giant Cuisinart. That is basically what we're doing here . . .
• We could use the by-product to fertilize our lawns, feed our pets, condense into food pellets, why, the possibilities are endless . . . We could feed those food pellets to those third world workers who manufacture our consumer goods we buy so cheaply on their underpaid, overworked backs. Every discounted product purchased at a Wal Mart or Old Navy has a price . . .
• This is really no different than using long range artillery, or surface to air missiles. Just another delivery mechanism is all, a smarter one perhaps, but still just a way of projecting hurt.
• Also they don't break the rules because they only kill enemy combatants, not humans....
• Maybe we should just go back to the dawn of civilization where they had single combat warriors: The leaders of the opposing tribe would appoint a warrior to battle the other side's warrior, naked, just knives or similar instruments, whoever won placed the losers into slavery... I would like to see Bush, naked, armed with only a knife facing off against his Iraqi or Afghani opponent... Like an Israeli soldier said about a stray dog they named 'Bush' on the invasion of Jenin: "He barks a lot, but other than that he's pretty useless."
• One of the truly frightening things about the idea of a robot army is that the government of the day will finally be free of having to maintain a dialogue with the population about the morality and / or necessity of any given conflict. Look at Iraq -- mounting US casualties forces the government to defend its policies and continuing presence. As terrible as it sounds, if you remove the casualties, you remove one of the few obstacles that remain to a government exercising extraordinary tyranny and oppression in other countries.
• Fes; I doubt it. I've yet to see the bulk of American opinion, as I'm exposed to it on-line and in TV media, give two flying fucks about the tens of thousands of civilians dead in Iraq. There is only concern for the relative handful of American soldiers killed. This development will likely make Americans even more enthusiastic about wars of aggression. What's a few million foreign dead civilians, if none of your own get killed?
• I guess this pretty much sums it up: Americans Used To Be Against Tyranny.
• Rumsfeld sees the military as hightech. He looked at how the business community changed during the dot com bubble and believes the same thing can happen at the Pentagon. That's why Norman Schwarzkopf thinks the man is an idiot. Another thought: can't someone just make a microwave weapon to fry the robots circuits? There are reports the U.S. used microwaves to fry the Iraqis radar. Article link for people without NY Time subscription. See this post before linking to the Ny Times.
• I guess this pretty much sums it up: Americans Used To Be Against Tyranny. You must not be familiar with the plan that Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz presented to Bush Sr. to start a war in in the former Soviet Union as it was turning democratic. Brent Sowcroft hates these guys. If Sowcroft was VP this would be a far different country right now.
• Yes, actually I read about Cheney's and Wolfowitz's plan to start a war in the former Soviet Union. The fact that country is such a mafia playground is because of those idiots and their assorted minions. . . I worry about the same thing happening to this country now. But instead of mafia, we have corporatism. Same thing, different cut of suit... U.S. in Vietnam, Soviets screw up U.S. Russia in Afghanistan, U.S. screws up Soviets, country ultimatly fails because it spends too much on military, bankrupting country. U.S. goes into Afghanistan and Iraq, spending too much on military, bankrupting country, subverting it's own nations democracy for a fictional 'war on terror'. I remember reading an article in one of the national magazines after the end of the 'Cold War' was declared and they were talking about the peace dividend. One of the things they talked about was how as democracy evolved in the Soviet Union, this country would become more like the old Soviet Union, would take on the self-declared role of 'world's policeman', even though no one asked it to do so. At the time I thought to myself how terrible it would be. And here we are, fifteen-odd years after the fact... Absolute power corrupts absolutly.