News Pentagon planning to build robot soldiers

[cjp]

We are very far away from a machine like that, and we may never be able to build such a roboter, like the vast majority of enginers who develope roboters and its software say so. But we certainly will have some amazing machines in future.

That's my department:
http://site.dutchrobocup.com/
Although I only worked on the vision subsystem. But I can confirm that the level we're working at is more like "how do we make sure it doesn't fall", or "how do we distinguish another robot from a shadow". It's nothing like Terminator (although our robot certainly looks cool), and definitely not the level where you need to worry about ethics. At least not about implementing "autonomous ethics" inside the robots. More about the ethics of how people use such robots.

I think robots might become like PCs in the future. They are a tool for people, not something you would like to let take autonomous decisions on a high level. For so far as it takes autonomous decisions, you want them to be easily understandable and predictable.

If American soldiers in Iraq can't distinguish terrorists from civilians, with all their training, and their human social abilities to guess the intentions of other human beings, then how will a robot ever be able to do so? When attempts are made to make a system do things like that, people will find out they are terribly unreliable.

 

[ar81]

Solution to defeat a robot... plug the cord off the outlet...

As for ethics, I feel that operators of such robots may experience "morality of height" which is what pilots experience. Since they do not see the mess in person, they feel it like a videogame. To me it is a horrifying vision.

In the battlefield, for innocent civilians those remote controlled machines will be terminators, and their experience will be equivalent to Terminator world. If morality and ethics becomes relative as it happened during the last years, Doom 3 ethics will prevail: fire at everything that moves and have fun with your genocide videogame.

 

[Eagle]

Solution to defeat a robot... plug the cord off the outlet...

As for ethics, I feel that operators of such robots may experience "morality of height" which is what pilots experience. Since they do not see the mess in person, they feel it like a videogame. To me it is a horrifying vision.

Ah, but everything they do is recorded. It may look like playing a video game while you're piloting the robot, but you're not the only one who sees that recording.

And remember, there's a log that says you were operating that machine when it committed said crimes.

 

[ar81]

And records can be stored as "classified" by political convenience.
You can record the actions of people, but you can't record the orders given to operators.
You can record IR signatures but you can't record the scream of a wounded mother or a baby.
You can't record the human disgrace of PSTD of civilians in the war zone.
It is a videogame and if the enemy is seen as a race of animals, it will be like crushing bugs.
With today CGI technology you can fake videos, so you can replace original tapes with faked ones.
Any kind of digital and audiovisual fraud you could imagine could take place.

If you order "stress the enemy" and you end up torturing him, but lawyers determine in their game of words that with it is not torture, then genocide will go with impunity, and orders given would not condemn high ranks, for ambiguous orders created "an atmosphere" of uncertain scope of orders, just like it happened in Abi Grahib, Bagram or Guantanamo.

So ethical war is just like military intelligence, a contradiction by itself.

 

[Eagle]

And records can be stored as "classified" by political convenience.
You can record the actions of people, but you can't record the orders given to operators.
You can record IR signatures but you can't record the scream of a wounded mother or a baby.
You can't record the human disgrace of PSTD of civilians in the war zone.
It is a videogame and if the enemy is seen as a race of animals, it will be like crushing bugs.
With today CGI technology you can fake videos, so you can replace original tapes with faked ones.
Any kind of digital and audiovisual fraud you could imagine could take place.

If you order "stress the enemy" and you end up torturing him, but lawyers determine in their game of words that with it is not torture, then genocide will go with impunity, and orders given would not condemn high ranks, for ambiguous orders created "an atmosphere" of uncertain scope of orders, just like it happened in Abi Grahib, Bagram or Guantanamo.

So ethical war is just like military intelligence, a contradiction by itself.

I think its very possible to record all of those things. There are ways to ensure that the records are not tampered with by immediately storing them at a controlled location. Though you seem to have little faith that standards will be enforced, so I'm not sure any system (technical or otherwise) would be ethical without enforced standards.

There are tomes full of arguments about what defines an ethical and just war, I'd be happy to steer you toward that debate if you are interested.
Just War theory is an interesting read, the Wikipedia article is pretty good start. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just_war


Perhaps military intelligence is a misnomer and knowledge is a more apt use. (intelligence is an innate trait, while knowledge is found and acquired).

 

[SiberianTiger]

An Israeli military robotic snake:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/8102972.stm

 

[ar81]

If American soldiers in Iraq can't distinguish terrorists from civilians, with all their training, and their human social abilities to guess the intentions of other human beings, then how will a robot ever be able to do so? When attempts are made to make a system do things like that, people will find out they are terribly unreliable.

Initial training of soldiers in modern days uses war videogames that train them to shoot before enlisting, not to socialize. Having individuals trained to kill people instead of people trained to protect people is exactly the opposite of what should be.

Romans gave those who they occupied the chance to become roman citizens and enjoy the benefits of infrastructure and court of justice and the chance to preserve their local culture. This is exactly the opposite of what occupation forces during last century have done, with lack of access to justice, concentration camps, violation of human rights and apartheid towards invaded people. So when people talk about how civilized we are now, I have doubts since evidence shows the opposite.

 

[SiberianTiger]

...-*-*^##@ IRRELEVANT *&*-()-.*....

 

[Ark]

It occurs to me that we'll be a LOT more supportive of using war to solve our problems when it doesn't cost us anything but ammunition and fuel.

 

[MJR]

That will probably fail and if it works it will back fire on us. The Russians tried making a army out of apes and that did not work one bit. I find that only humans should be the soldiers because we do not need to repair them, oil them, or do maintenance checks on them. Robots also have a mind of their own. If a major malfunction were to happen and they all went berserk, we would be screwed. Robots are very powerful and intelligent. It does not sound like a very bright idea no matter who or how builds it.

 

[SiberianTiger]

The Russians tried making a army out of apes

You seem to know something I do not. Can you drop a ref link, please? That's of course if you don't count certain nationalities for apes (I'm sure you do not).

 

[MJR]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543814/posts

 

[ar81]

You seem to know something I do not. Can you drop a ref link, please? That's of course if you don't count certain nationalities for apes (I'm sure you do not).

History Channel also presented something similar some days ago.
Robots are like very accurate mindless armored apes.
I bet humans may figure out the way to defeat them.

 

[MJR]

Maybe lure them in a pit with bananas? Lol.

 

[SiberianTiger]

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1543814/posts

Oh, what a brilliant BullS***! :rofl:

---------- Post added at 19:47 ---------- Previous post was at 19:45 ----------

BTW, here's a one more hopping robot vid:

 

[MJR]

Oh, what a brilliant BullS***! :rofl:

---------- Post added at 19:47 ---------- Previous post was at 19:45 ----------

BTW, here's a one more hopping robot vid:
YouTube - LegLab

Tell Stalin that. I have no idea what type of an idiot would want to make that.

 

[escapetomsfate]

The problem with robots is, a weakness affects all of them. If the enemy finds out how to kill one of them easily, the rest are easily nuetralised. Humans are all different, and harder to kill over a wide area.

I think the US should continue with their future force warrior program - a human that can make all the right moral decisions with the physical advantages of a robot. Advantaged soldiers means you need less of them, meaning more lives saved.

 

[ar81]

Maybe lure them in a pit with bananas? Lol.

One ape can be lured with bananas.
If you lure one robot, you may lure the entire network.

---------- Post added at 16:00 ---------- Previous post was at 15:57 ----------

Oh, what a brilliant BullS***! :rofl:

Then History Channel has BS too...

 

[MJR]

I hate when people criticize the history channel. Nowadays everybody always tried to prove something wrong.

 

[SiberianTiger]

Tell Stalin that. I have no idea what type of an idiot would want to make that.

Well, biology was toughly weird in the USSR in the post-war years, that's true (Genetics was condemned as a pseudo-science committed to doing harm, for one). The mentioned study might be a spin-off of that madness. Of course, it had not a slightest chance of having a useful output in any case.

I can't regard it a legitimate "try" to do something.

---------- Post added at 20:07 ---------- Previous post was at 20:06 ----------

a human that can make all the right moral decisions

If humans could do all the right moral decisions, we would live in paradise.