Robotic War Ships
 

From Wired.Along with the autonomous aircraft and land vehicles planned, the Pentagon can run a whole war, right from their desks.
This scares the hell out of me.

At one time I worried about the professional army, and these robot weapons, carrying on secret wars without our knowing. But the internet has pretty much killed that worry... we'd know.

The worry that hasn't abated, is they will be used on us.

Some people subscribe to the "if it's only used on the bad guys then we have nothing to worry about" - but the problem is, what if you find yourself, one day, defined as one of the bad guys? Things like government spying tools (and robot armies) don't just go away when different politicians get elected; when different laws, that you may or may not agree with, get passed, and you find that you can't even hide in the sanctuary of your own home and do what you want.

I thought the Terminator was a fictional piece? I see it coming down the road in blue jeans and a cowboy hat.

"And when they grab you with their metal claws, you can't break free. Because they're robots, and they're made of metal."

...and robots are strong."

Autonomous killing machines.
And there were those who complain about contractors and non-military targets. Computers have poor judgment at best when making self determining decisions , and giving them the power of life and death is an overstretched delegation of power. Furthermore, human life is far too precises not to be taken without remorse.
This will end well, just like the movies.

Welcome to the Cellar, Mem!

I am also worried about this issue. Haven't these fools seen any science fiction movies? The robots always turn on us. Why the hell are we arming them?

But seriously, malfunction, mis-identification, poor programming ... there is so much that can go wrong.
I guess the appeal is the hope that there will be fewer flag-draped coffins. But the other side is that pollies will find it easier to go to war.

Even when they are programmed well, operator error will always sneak in.

From today's Washington Post:

The sky is falling... it really is.

Where's Undertoad to tell us that everything will just sort of work itself out somehow...move it along folks...nothing more to see here?

Worse, these unmanned ships aren't drones (which have operators back at base) but rather are autonomous. They make their own decisions, without a human in the loop. Which, when they also have firepower, gives a whole new level of meaning to "the blue screen of death".

It also occurs to me, that they'd make great scapegoats for when things go wrong. "A military spokesman acknowledged the deaths of the 800 civilians, but explained that it was due to a series of mis-identifications by battle-bots. No one is to blame, and no-one can or will be charged. Nevertheless, we regret the incident..."

Holy Shit.

This level of disregard of human life can only be described as evil.

Sorry for the double post but I can't edit yet. The quote should have been ZenGum's post

Wow, I'm not sure if we want to use this contractor for our robot ships.

http://www.switched.com/2007/10/19/n...00010000000001

I just wanted to endorse the link in lookout's post.

Holy :speechls: !!

You guys worry way too much. I'm sure a good-hearted 15 year old savant working on the project from his advanced research positions in DARPA will realize that he wants to live so that he can marry his new girlfriend he met between late night work sessions in the campus rumpus room, and he'll change out the control chip at the last moment so that the crazed robots attack the Pentagon instead, and we'll all live happily ever after.

Alas, I must retract my endorsement of Lookout's link.
New Scientist ( http://technology.newscientist.com/a...or-deaths.html ) suggests it was simply a mechanical malfunction, rather than being anything to do with a computer going haywire. The gun still (normally) requires a human in the loop to give the fire order.
I'm sure the mothers of the nine dead feel much better about this now.

How about a bin Laden type getting control of an unmanned weapon? Let the West make the capital investment and do the building, all he has to do is crack the security...

Good point Griff.
At one level it wouldn't apply. If the machine really is autonomous, then there is no "controller" and so no bad guy can "take control" of it, in an on-the-battlefield sense.
But what they must have is high-level control, such as being told to eliminate enemy in a given area, much as orders would be given to a human soldier. Yeah, if the enemy (whoever they be) can find a way to hack that security, and start giving them orders ... oooohhh nasty scenario.