Pentagon Wants 'Autonomous' War Robots

[unhappycamper]

Pentagon Wants 'Autonomous' War Robots
June 12, 2008
Philadelphia Inquirer

Jun. 12--The next generation of military robots won't just be humanoids like the Terminator.

The robots of the future will likely work in concert, like a swarm of ants. Others may creep like spiders or hover like hummingbirds, if the work at the University of Pennsylvania is an indication.

Most of the more than 5,000 robotic devices now in Iraq are remote-controlled, sniffing out explosives or performing other jobs with constant human instructions.

But in a shift with huge implications for warfare and diplomacy, the military wants robots that act on their own volition. It's a prospect that promises to save lives, but could also make wars more palatable and easier to start, some experts say.

"The key (to the new robots) is increasing autonomy," said Joseph Mait, senior technical researcher at the U.S. Army Research Lab in Adelphi, Md. "Now we have several Soldiers per robot, but in the future we'd like to have one Soldier with many robots."


Rest of article at: http://www.military.com/news/article/pentagon-wants-autonomous-war-robots.html



uhc comment: This is just another reason to cut the $735,700,000,000 military budget.

[patrice]

1. It isn't, as in the Matrix, the machines we NEED to fear, but the notion that War can be conducted

by remote control, without Individuals investing their own lives in that which is deemed so "Valuable" that it is appropriate that OTHER human beings die for it.

[TechBear_Seattle]

4. There was a ST:TOS episode to that effect

Basically, two nations were at war. The war was conducted cleanly by two computers engaged in, basically, a virtual game of Battleship. When a town or city was "struck," a number of people were randomly selected and ordered to be vaporized as casualties. These people had an hour or so to say their farewells before reporting to a disintegration chamber where they were painlessly exterminated. Everything was clean: no blood, no destroyed infrastructure, no loose ends.

This war had gone one for almost 300 years by the time the episode starts.

[patrice]

6. Have you ever read Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game?

It had a similar premise, but the War was a fiction conducted entirely between the warriors without their knowledge that it was a fiction, i.e. a virtual war. Strategic Blogging was also an integral part of the plot.

[BattyDem]

2. So the future of our military is ... the Borg?!

:scared:




edited: typo

[TechBear_Seattle]

3. Now, define the enemy which these robots will target

And explain what will be done to prevent them from murdering civilians. Or from being used against our own people. And I'm curious as to what safeguards will be put in place to keep them from going rogue, what safeguards we will be able to use to control them without letting our (presumed) enemies being able to co-opt and use them against us.

[jimshoes]

5. Our mistakes must, out of necessity

come back to bite us in the ass several times before some genius in the Department of Permawar decides maybe some particular Dr. Strangelove type idea isn't so great after all.

[patrice]

7. "____________ is worth ending human life for" is a LIE unless it includes your OWN life or at least

the definite possibility that your own life is on the line for _____________________.