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So Much For The "First Law of Robotics"

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  • So Much For The "First Law of Robotics"

    A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield
    By TIM WEINER

    Published: February 16, 2005


    he American military is working on a new generation of soldiers, far different from the army it has.

    "They don't get hungry," said Gordon Johnson of the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon. "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? Yes."

    The robot soldier is coming.

    The Pentagon predicts that robots will be a major fighting force in the American military in less than a decade, hunting and killing enemies in combat. Robots are a crucial part of the Army's effort to rebuild itself as a 21st-century fighting force, and a $127 billion project called Future Combat Systems is the biggest military contract in American history.

    The military plans to invest tens of billions of dollars in automated armed forces. The costs of that transformation will help drive the Defense Department's budget up almost 20 percent, from a requested $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, excluding the costs of war. The annual costs of buying new weapons is scheduled to rise 52 percent, from $78 billion to $118.6 billion.

    Military planners say robot soldiers will think, see and react increasingly like humans. In the beginning, they will be remote-controlled, looking and acting like lethal toy trucks. As the technology develops, they may take many shapes. And as their intelligence grows, so will their autonomy.

    The robot soldier has been a dream at the Pentagon for 30 years. And some involved in the work say it may take at least 30 more years to realize in full. Well before then, they say, the military will have to answer tough questions if it intends to trust robots with the responsibility of distinguishing friend from foe, combatant from bystander.

    Even the strongest advocates of automatons say war will always be a human endeavor, with death and disaster. And supporters like Robert Finkelstein, president of Robotic Technology in Potomac, Md., are telling the Pentagon it could take until 2035 to develop a robot that looks, thinks and fights like a soldier. The Pentagon's "goal is there," he said, "but the path is not totally clear."

    Robots in battle, as envisioned by their builders, may look and move like humans or hummingbirds, tractors or tanks, cockroaches or crickets. With the development of nanotechnology - the science of very small structures - they may become swarms of "smart dust." The Pentagon intends for robots to haul munitions, gather intelligence, search buildings or blow them up.

    All these are in the works, but not yet in battle. Already, however, several hundred robots are digging up roadside bombs in Iraq, scouring caves in Afghanistan and serving as armed sentries at weapons depots.

    By April, an armed version of the bomb-disposal robot will be in Baghdad, capable of firing 1,000 rounds a minute. Though controlled by a soldier with a laptop, the robot will be the first thinking machine of its kind to take up a front-line infantry position, ready to kill enemies.

    "The real world is not Hollywood," said Rodney A. Brooks, director of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at M.I.T. and a co-founder of the iRobot Corporation. "Right now we have the first few robots that are actually useful to the military."

    Despite the obstacles, Congress ordered in 2000 that a third of the ground vehicles and a third of deep-strike aircraft in the military must become robotic within a decade. If that mandate is to be met, the United States will spend many billions of dollars on military robots by 2010.

    As the first lethal robots head for Iraq, the role of the robot soldier as a killing machine has barely been debated. The history of warfare suggests that every new technological leap - the longbow, the tank, the atomic bomb - outraces the strategy and doctrine to control it.

    "The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions," said Mr. Johnson, who leads robotics efforts at the Joint Forces Command research center in Suffolk, Va. "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."

    Trusting robots with potentially lethal decision-making may require a leap of faith in technology not everyone is ready to make. Bill Joy, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems, has worried aloud that 21st-century robotics and nanotechnology may become "so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses."




    So, plans are already in the works for autonomous machines that can kill.

    Should Asimov's Laws be ignored as a simple piece of fiction, or should they be considered?

    Will future events make them palatable, or even inevitable?
    Last edited by The Mad Monk; February 16, 2005, 07:08.
    No, I did not steal that from somebody on Something Awful.

  • #2
    I wonder if Hollywoods war movies of the next decades will feature heroic robots defending freedom
    Blah

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by BeBro
      I wonder if Hollywoods war movies of the next decades will feature heroic robots defending freedom
      I guess you haven't seen the Terminator sequels. How do you think we got our Governator?
      I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
      - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

      Comment


      • #4
        With robots doing the actual killing there is no stopping the war, since no bodys will be shipped home and the horrific reality of war won´t disturb the lives of people back home...
        I love being beaten by women - Lorizael

        Comment


        • #5
          Eh. They won't have the money for it.
          I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
          - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

          Comment


          • #6
            The US military budget is already obscenly high. They will afford it, even if no one else will...
            I love being beaten by women - Lorizael

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Kidicious


              I guess you haven't seen the Terminator sequels. How do you think we got our Governator?
              Have seen them, but he still looked human in those movies, except when he got injured ....errrm....damaged.
              Blah

              Comment


              • #8
                I mean it's going to be slow going. Humans will still have to fight for the forseeable future.
                I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
                - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by Kidicious


                  I guess you haven't seen the Terminator sequels. How do you think we got our Governator?
                  Television- the drug of the nation.

                  (with thanks to the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy)


                  Same way you 'got' Reagan- people wanted 'Shane' and ended up with Hopalong Cassidy.
                  Vive la liberte. Noor Inayat Khan, Dachau.

                  ...patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. Edith Cavell, 1915

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Yeah, and for some tasks using robots may still not work even with more advanced technology.
                    Blah

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by BeBro
                      Yeah, and for some tasks using robots may still not work even with more advanced technology.
                      Programming the dvd recorder ?
                      Vive la liberte. Noor Inayat Khan, Dachau.

                      ...patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. Edith Cavell, 1915

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Telling the difference between a military convoy and a refugees?
                        I love being beaten by women - Lorizael

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Keeping coloured items that run out of all white washes?


                          Ensuring you never get an odd sock ?
                          Vive la liberte. Noor Inayat Khan, Dachau.

                          ...patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone. Edith Cavell, 1915

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Now you got me, I can't answer that
                            Blah

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              So we will all be reduced to nothing but finding the lost socks.
                              I drank beer. I like beer. I still like beer. ... Do you like beer Senator?
                              - Justice Brett Kavanaugh

                              Comment

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