In These Times: Attack of the Killer Robots

[marmar]

Attack of the Killer Robots
The Pentagon’s dream of a techno army is doomed to fail.

By Eric Stoner


One of the most captivating storylines in science fiction involves a nightmarish vision of the future in which autonomous killer robots turn on their creators and threaten the extinction of the human race. Hollywood blockbusters such as Terminator and The Matrix are versions of this cautionary tale, as was R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), the 1920 Czech play by Karel Capek that marked the first use of the word “robot.”

In May 2007, the U.S. military reached an ominous milestone in the history of warfare—one that took an eerie step toward making this fiction a reality. After more than three years of development, the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division based south of Baghdad, deployed armed ground robots.

Although only three of these weaponized “unmanned systems” have hit Iraq’s streets, to date, National Defense magazine reported in September 2007 that the Army has placed an order for another 80.

A month after the robots arrived in Iraq, they received “urgent material release approval” to allow their use by soldiers in the field. The military, however, appears to be proceeding with caution. ..........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/4243/attack_of_the_killer_robots

[MrPerson]

1. Is this necessarily a bad thing? Read this part.

“They don’t get hungry,” Gordon Johnson, who headed a program on unmanned systems at the Joint Forces Command at the Pentagon told the New York Times in 2005. “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.”

[acmavm]

2. Yeah, so much to be thrilled about, remote control killing machines.

Well, we have 'em in the skies, why not everywhere?

[MrPerson]

4. I was thinking of the part where we have less dead soldiers

coming home in body bags.

When is the other part, the decision to kill, ever going to really change?

How do we change human nature?

[acmavm]

7. I don't understand why people feel they are allowed to kill in the

acquisition of power and money. Enough is never enough.

But remote contol killing just sickens me. From the dropping of white phosphorus on civilians to nuking an already defeated nation just to make an 'example' of them.

Of course I don't understand lining up a whole village against a ditch and machine gunning them down either.

[RC]

9. Never mind the "Enemy" is in reality citizens like you and me defending themselves

against foreign invaders. Their dead bodies don't seem to count. Dehumanize them even further by using autonomous 'intelligent' machines to do the killing. That's Clean War, correct?

[MrPerson]

10. No war is clean. But, I know of some widows that would

gladly have their husbands replaced with these machines.

[angrycarpenter]

3. I disagree

It would be much easier for an a guy sitting at a computer screen to turn a machine gun on a crowd than a soldier to do it in person. I can see a future where operations are carried out from a central location where the enemy is nothing but a blip to be eliminated. War should not be a video game

I know it is hard to find morality in warfare but removing the human element from a mission that will become more and more killing poor rag-tag militants is a step in the wrong direction. Remember, if they can do it to them they could do it to us.

[MrPerson]

5. Is there a battlefield element that causes more destruction?

Once its on its on. There would be less Hadithas, right?

[Old and In the Way]

6. This is an ominous change in the ethics of war.

When there are no human costs for one side to incur, the calculus to engage in more wars will be easier to make without that human cost dimension to consider. Robots have no conscience and the controller interface becomes a game without any moral connection. Our kill to loss ratio will certainly go up, but at what cost to our humanity and world opinion? There's something almost Nazi-like in the employment of this technology.

[MrPerson]

8. There are no ethics in war. War is pure evil.

[MrPerson]

11. OK. Forget I said anything.

Maybe we shouldn't give our soldiers GUNS either.

Make it a fairer fight.

[RC]

12. Better yet, why are our soldiers even there?

[MrPerson]

13. We can leave any time AFAIC

[ThoughtCriminal]

14. There is a difference between autonomous robots

and remote controlled weapons. When machine AI is allowed to select targets, a line is crossed.