US Killer Robot Policy: Full Speed Ahead 202
Lasrick writes "Princeton's Mark Gubrud has an excellent piece on the United States killer robot policy. In 2012, without much fanfare, the U.S. announced the world's first openly declared national policy for killer robots. That policy has been widely misperceived as one of caution, according to Gubrud: 'A careful reading of the directive finds that it lists some broad and imprecise criteria and requires senior officials to certify that these criteria have been met if systems are intended to target and kill people by machine decision alone. But it fully supports developing, testing, and using the technology, without delay. Far from applying the brakes, the policy in effect overrides longstanding resistance within the military, establishes a framework for managing legal, ethical, and technical concerns, and signals to developers and vendors that the Pentagon is serious about autonomous weapons.'"
So this is how Skynet starts (Score:5, Interesting)
Asimov argued against the Frankenstein complex as it applies to robots, and indeed many people have made the point, asking how something like Skynet could happen.
Would we really be stupid enough to build something that is smarter and stronger than us, and designed to kill us without safeguards?
Apparently, yes.
Did you even RTFA? (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I'm working in the field, for the DoD. We're actually putting more work into getting them to autonomously prevent a shot that humans commanded than we are into getting them to take a shot uncommanded. The only weapons that are anywhere close to usable are anti-aircraft systems (starting in the 1970's) that have a self defense mode. Given that we're currently so cowardly in the ROE that more civillians have died in Afghanistan from our unwillingness to shoot than have died from our decisions to shoot, I'd say we're nowhere close to letting a robot make a decision, and won't be in the next decade.
really intended for domestic (in the US of A) use (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyone else remember the picures of the Russian women standing in front of the tanks during the Soviet collapse? The soldiers were generally willing to kill, and die, to protect the Soviet Union from US, but NOT from their mothers and grandmothers.
These robots will have no qualms about massacring children and women (even the non-revolutionaries) if so ordered to protect the 1%. Plus, a fat lot of good your .308 hunting rifle will do against an armor-plated killing machine.
Re:Completely insane... (Score:4, Interesting)
Bah!
The three laws is a bunch of overhyped rubbish - quadruply so in the case of robots that are not fully AI and could not even interpret them. Also due to the extremely naive assumption that people in charge of making robots will want them to respect human life and implement these anyway - I mean they don't currently?!
Militaries? FoxConn? NSA? CIA? etc? Their track record is CURRENTLY completely abysmal.
Yes I know you were joking. I just don't see any of this as a joke long term.
This is not conspiracy - I look at the CURRENT state of affairs and add killer robots and feel sick to my stomach. This really is no joke and it is about time the plebs woke the fuck up already.
You (and many other nations) have currently lost control of your government and if anything it currently works against you wherever it can for the benefit of the ruling class. (NB: Not you) This much is patently obvious and if you disagree I suggest you research the current value of the shadow banking system (100 trillion), what the rich pay in REAL taxes, and where 99% of the additional wealth generated since the crash has gone (i.e. to 1% of the population) while huge numbers of your fellow citizens (remember them?!) are either the "working poor" or unemployed while nothing is done to help.
None of this is conspiracy - this is well documented fact from this very website no less.
Soon efficient robots will exist that will be able to vanquish/suppress/intimidate/murder people without those pesky human traits that exists in many of us such as empathy, compassion, guilt, regret etc. Also they will not innately have danger of leaks, spies, whistle blowers, etc.
You see it is very hard to find/train/indoctrinate/trick enough psychopaths to carry out these functions on an every increasing number of disgruntled citizens and foreigners.
And your governments have ALREADY shown they are MORE than willing to use those (albeit very flawed) "human resources" for many, many nefarious purposes/war crimes/assassinations/etc. And this if from what we know from the facts (documents, reports, leaks etc), let alone anything that might have gone on behind the scenes, yet (if ever) to be uncovered.
If I was you I would be very, very afraid. But not for the science fiction reasons given in most of these vapid articles written this way because people loved the terminator movie and a book. For the simple fact that robots could now carry out much the same sort of behaviours we already see with the restriction of having to use human beings.
Finding/training/indoctrinating/tricking an army of psychos is very, very hard. Finding a handful of people whose moral compass is naturally broken is not that hard at all. (just ask the CIA)
I would be far more afraid of a robot controlled by a psychopathic human than by another robot ANY DAY OF THE WEEK.
And look around: many of those psychopaths are holding the keys to the kingdom already.