Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’: Expert

Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’: Expert


Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.


“They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.

Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.

There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.

The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

It we are not careful, he said, that could change.

more...

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/02/27/7328/

It's too useful a capability to resist.

:eyes:
rocknation

Please put down your weapon, you have 15 seconds to comply...

Is Junior Bush really going to have a presidential library?

once they get out of control they won't need humans!

This is a friggin movie we are in isn't it?

1. A robot shall not hurt a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot shall obey the order of a human being, except when this would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot shall preserve its own existence, except when this would conflict with the First or Second Laws.

4. A robot shall have a clearly marked and accessible 'Off' switch.

...just in case.

I continually ask myself , what have we become . It's all in the name of death where the most money and effort goes isn't it ?

It makes me sick to think about this . On one hand people rave about the advancements made to save life and on the other they rave about machines and smart bombs and the like to eliminate many lifes in seconds .

How to blow off a set of legs and replace them with metal parts is really progress , really sick progress when the legs would be there in tact if it were not for the sick military hardware building a testing their horrid inventions .

Just push the damn red button already and get it over with . If you ask me , anyone who works for any place making bombs and war equipment is sick as well as the freak scientists mixing bio swills in some underground lab . I could not do this no matter what the conditions were , never .

"Law and order puppets, remote-controlled by greed..." -Devo, "Smooth Noodle Maps"

Honestly, though, why should I fear R2Death2 any more than some of the violent sociopaths currently pulling the triggers? At least the battlebot isn't going to kill me because I asked him to turn down the Toby Keith, or because I look a little Jew-y.

Red meat is gonna kill me, salt is gonna kill me, alcohol is gonna kill me, ciggybutts are going to kill me, terraists are going to kill me, asteriod 4465-WTF-6 is gonna kill me...

I had no idea I was so popular.

Thanks for that perspective.