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.'"
Cylons (Score:3)
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If we're lucky we can buy a few seconds by invoking The Shadow Proclamation...
Re:Cylons (Score:4, Funny)
I was thinking more along the lines of Bender.
Re:Cylons (Score:5, Funny)
Now I can get behind the program.
War! With hookers and blackjack! Forget the war - and the blackjack.
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So say we all.
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That was my exact same thought.
Man walks past some security station or other holding a bottle of water. American Security Services (ASS) droid confronts person:
ASS-droid: "Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply."
Man wonders what the fuck the thing is talking about.
ASS-droid: "You now have 15 seconds to comply. You are in direct violation of Penal Code 1.13, Section 9. You have 5 seconds to comply."
Man turns and starts to run.
ASS-droid: "Four... three... two... one... I am now autho
Re:Cylons (Score:4, Insightful)
The important question here is why autonomous killing machines, what benefit? The answer is likely to be very deeply disturbing. At a guess so military types and politicians can blame the supplier for murdering children, whilst continuing to send in the device's to terrorise the targeted populace in order to gain control of resources or just to spend money for no reason at all other than generating a profit from that spending.
Asimov Be Damned (Score:2, Funny)
"Damn the Asimovs, full speed ahead!
Completely insane... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not even sure what else to say here... so much for the Three Laws ;-)
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Addtional ammendments (Score:5, Funny)
Law 1, article 4, section 53, subsection 12
You shall not do any harm to a human being unless they are attacking or trying to arrest a CEO/Billionaire.
Law 1, article 4, section 53, subsection 12 a. If CEO is being arrested by armed humans of any sort (including police), you are free to cause said human's harm and even death.
Law 1, article 4, section 53, subsection 12 subsection b. Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, and every other Wall street banker shall be protected even if it means killing every other human in the vicinity.
Law 1, article 4, section 53, subsection 12 subsection c. : folks who can pay 100 million dollars per year shall have unlimited protection by said robots.
Law 1, article 4, section 53, subsection 12 subsection d. : Members of Congress are immune forever from actions of said robots.
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Directive 4 [wikia.com]
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In the US, the Three Laws of Robotics would be as complicated as copyright laws.
Unfortunately someone owns the copyright on the "Three Laws of Robotics" so we can't use them unless we pay the licensing fees.
It is possible to create practical tests for autonomous killing machines. Primarily, you create them human then evaluate their capacity to do the right thing in combat situations. However, AI are still a long, long way from meeting that goal. Such ideas are not covered by copyright, but CC.
GrpA
Re:Completely insane... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Completely insane... (Score:5, Insightful)
The Three Laws were EXPRESSLY invented to show why such a simple system will not work.
The three laws were expressly invented to make a system that works.
He then spent extensive amounts of time exploring them for unintended consequences and corner cases where they did not work.
It is frustrating people think '3 laws safe'.
Its FAR more frustrating that rather than trying to -fix- the edge cases Asimov uncovered with the 3 laws (later 4 laws), we've decided to just go full steam ahead without any laws at all with robots designed for the sole purpose of killing us.
Re: Completely insane... (Score:5, Funny)
Ah, but one law is just waaaay simpler than three.
It's just unfortunate that law is -- Kill humans.
Re:Completely insane... (Score:4, Insightful)
These are AI laws. They have nothing to do with what we have now, as we don't have any real AIs. Our governments use of these will basically be machine guns with servos that shoot anything that moves or possibly drones that are authorized to shoot anyone identified with a weapon in hand in a given area. If we actually had real AIs I'd be less concerned, but having a computer that's likely not any more intelligent than my smartphone or, at best, my desktop PC decide if someone should be killed or not is terrifying.
Re:Completely insane... (Score:5, Insightful)
> Its FAR more frustrating that rather than trying to -fix- the edge cases Asimov uncovered with the 3 laws (later 4 laws), we've decided to just go full steam ahead without any laws at all with robots designed for the sole purpose of killing us.
It's simple. Robots will follow orders. They will have no qualms about executing illegal orders. No issues with killing civilians. No hesitation about killing the very population that they were supposedly built to protect.
Amy and police might actually not gun down a mob of 1000s just to protect a couple of corrupt and powerful fucks. They didn't in Egypt. The elite know this... so they need robots who will protect them unconditionally.
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What do you have against efficiency?
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.
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The Three Laws were EXPRESSLY invented to show why such a simple system will not work. Asimov spent extensive amounts of time pointing this out to us. It is frustrating people think '3 laws safe'.
The *early works* show how it wouldn't work in simple robots, while the later works show how advanced humaniform robots such as R. Daneel Olivaw ought be able to resolve difficult situations with increasingly narrower gray area that would prevent them from resolving only the most complex situations (they actually only had problems with resolving the zeroth law issues - I don't recall a humaniform robot getting conflicted over the implications of laws 1, 2, and 3). Reading that sort of like refining a fracta
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oh please, there's so much "Star Trek computer" in it. Hand a robot a gun, put it in front of a another guy with a gun about to kill someone. By the first law of robotics, do you by action kill the would-be killer or through inaction let the victim be killed? It always picks the "right" solutions as if by magic. By the way, wasn't there also a story where the term "human" became corrupted so the robots didn't violate their laws by attacking "sub-humans" or something to that effect? It's been a long time sin
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Exactly. There are many stories (and well worth reading) pointing at numerous 'edge' cases where the three laws can get a little ambiguous. I.e. since a robot should never allow a person to come to harm, through action or inaction. However, should a robot allow itself to come to harm (probably through inaction) if the robot determines that the person will come to harm anyway? And how do you tell if the robot breaks Law 1 in this case?
That, detective, is the right question. Program terminated.
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So far, meat-sack, corporation, and...
Re:Completely insane... (Score:5, Funny)
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I'm not even sure what else to say here... so much for the Three Laws ;-)
The three laws are the Robotic Constitution. And now witness all the exceptions granted by the KillerRobotic Congress of the federal robotic government in Machinegton A.C.
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Let's balance this out on our options. Option one is three laws from a Science Fiction author who the three laws and the turned around and wrote multiple books about how they inevitably just couldn't work. Option two involves the real world and keep our service members out of harms way from real missiles and bullets.
Let me think real hard about this, obey three fictional laws parodied by the very person who came up with them or protect real human beings from harm? I know that might sound like a tough choice
How is it different than a bomb? (Score:2)
If you were going to bomb a building, and thus kill everything in a kill radius, is it significantly different if you send in a kill bot with no off switch. Maybe the AI on the robot makes mistakes as shoots some non-combatants. The bomb doesn't even have AI.
Mission planners have the trade off of, do I send in very selective humans to avoid casualties, but put those humans at risk, or do I drop a bomb and not put my soldiers at risk but have the potential for indisriminate killing. With unclear info it's
People only remember the Movie Robots... (Score:2)
Nice ones like Hal or the Terminator.
Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers series is much more terrifying.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(Saberhagen) [wikipedia.org]
"What do you mean you killed the guy that knew the override password? He knew too much, Sir." :)
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.
Yeah... (Score:4, Funny)
> 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. [emphasis mine]
(I think I've seen that movie...) What could possibly go wrong?
I wonder if they'd be running Windows for Killer Robots?
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Cop robots? You mean like speeding cameras?
Remember when everyone thought that humanoid robots where the wave of the future and would be grandpa's maid and take over the job of factory workers? It turns out that humanoid robots are bloody hard, and it's a lot easier to automate the task at hand with more conventional tools and machines that look nothing like people.
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Re:No.... (Score:4, Insightful)
BANG!
You now have 5 seconds to comply. 4 3 2 1
Gotta love those mismanaged mutexes :)
It seems like some human police have already shifted to that algorithm.
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(I think I've seen that movie...) What could possibly go wrong?
As long as the killbots have a preset kill limit, I think we'll be okay.
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(I think I've seen that movie...) What could possibly go wrong?
As long as the killbots have a preset kill limit, I think we'll be okay.
Unless there's a rounding error, or another FPU issue, or a counter rolls over.
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Yep. Intel FDIV bug, 1994; some prime number calculations are "innaccurate".
Intel Logical Human Interaction Processor anomoly, 2023; a town of 500 is wiped out.
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Um, lessee... sometimes the only way to win is to not use 8 bit registers... na, I got nuthin'.
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I wonder if they'd be running Windows for Killer Robots?
Let's hope so, because you would be able to press the Killbot's Start button to shut it down.
I hope you're right. On the other hand...
"The killbot has gone berserk! Shut it down! Shut it down!"
"I'm trying! What the hell is a 'charms bar'??"
No Problem! (Score:2)
Nothing can go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong, go wrong...
Did you expect something different? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Yeah, no. Most people object to it because fully autonomous killing machines cannot be more reliable than our most advanced fully autonomous non-killing machines are now. The objection is less about indiscriminately bombing people within the designated target area than it is about a glitch causing the "designated target area" to change from the actual target to...oh, I dunno, a lone seagull on the beach? The moon? A city 5000km away from the original target? The base which initially launched the drone and c
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It would be pretty darned hypocritical of us to indiscriminately bomb people and then say that you shouldn't use A.I.
Now that it's becoming well-known that drone operators get severe PTSD [google.com] (an injury to the moral reasoning part of the brain), the USG is going to need some H-K drones [technovelgy.com] to carry on their murderous adventures.
A.I.'s don't balk at attacking civilians either - they'll never be told that their maintenance budgets are funded by their targets' paycheck withholdings.
Frightening thought (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a chilling thought that the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism is also pioneering drone and robotics technology. I guess some bright spark somewhere decided he can get around international law by just having the machines do the killing, because "there's no law against machines doing it, right?"
Most Americans turn around and say "what law are we breaking?". How about this one, from the UN General Assembly: "No State may use or encourage the use of economic, political or any other type of measures to coerce another State in order to obtain from it the subordination of the exercise of its sovereign rights or to secure from it advantages of any kind. Also, no State shall organize, assist, foment, finance, incite or tolerate subversive, terrorist, or armed activities directed towards the violent overthrow of the regime of another State, or interfere in civil strife in another State." Don't even get me started on "targeted killing" or "extrajudicial killing", which is just summary execution without trial. Even Goering got a trial. Even Eichmann got a trial. And then you have the nerve to call yourselves a "free country"? Wake up, people, put your shiny iPhones down.
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.
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...Would we really be stupid enough to build something that is smarter and stronger than us, and designed to kill us without safeguards?...
In order to guarantee the American way of life? I'm willing to take that risk!
10 points and a doughnut if you can guess the movie. :)
I don't mind (Score:5, Funny)
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Because what, you expect the killbot to come running after you? It'll have an IR camera and assault rifle, point-and-shoot style. Let's call it more of a moving turret, less of a "robot".
Bad technology to replace evil technology? (Score:2)
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1: you still show up on thermal.
2: you can't outrun an aimbot.
3: it won't be top heavy biped.
4: it calls in air support and levels the building.
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- Shooting a blue portal beneath it, and an orange one above it.
- Shooting an orange portal beneath it, and a blue one above it.
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Hiding behind a blanket.
Thermal camera? Motion sensor?
Running around behind the robot to it's blind spot.
It's a robot. Who says it doesn't have "eyes in the back of its head"?
Pushing it over on its side.
It's probably both very heavy and on a tank-style turret. Good luck.
Ascending some stairs.
This has already been done; you just make the turret rotatable such that it can also climb stairs. Or, y'know, you just give the thing a helicopter.
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Wow, 14 replies and no one actually provided you links to "current state of the art robots". I do hope you find these at least entertaining, if not informative.
Check out the darpa Atlas robot, preferably the videos from the past 3-4 months.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darpa+atlas [youtube.com]
There is also the darpa PetMan
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=darpa+petman [youtube.com]
Good luck pushing over one of these beasts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BtRnzlO7m_M [youtube.com]
Components such as the high speed hand based o
B.B. Rodriguez (Score:2)
"Hey, baby; wanna kill all humans?"
Bad humor is how I deal with horrifying realities I really don't want to face; the worse the situation, the more bad jokes I want to make.
Now, where did I put that 50,000 page volume of stupid puns?
Read Kill Decision (Score:4, Insightful)
Nothing to worry about. I'm sure that . . . (Score:2)
. . . the targeting algorithms will be vetted by legal teams every bit as diligent and committed to human rights and Constitutional law as the people in FISA courts who have helped keep the NSA from misusing their powers.
In related news, if you have legitimate business in areas of cities frequented by anti-war protestors, you can purchase a RapidPass Trusted Citizen(tm) badge which will eliminate time-consuming drop-and-freeze inspections by SecuriCorps (tm) PeacePal(tm) hover-drones. F%$ing hippies need no
Necessary safety precaution (Score:2)
Make sure to make your killbots with a pre-set kill limit. That way, they can be defeated by Zapp Brannigan by sending wave after wave of his own men at them.
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But... they can always make more killbots...
No Problem! (Score:2)
Changing my name to 'Philip J. Fry'
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Great addition for Grand Theft Auto 6 (Score:2)
Got ahead . . . just try to steal that Robot Killer Car.
The car says that it doesn't want to be stolen . . . and who is going to do it . . . "you, and what army?"
I got a lot more worried about this kind of stuff (Score:2)
nuked... (Score:2)
I for one (Score:2)
Star Trek to the rescue. (Score:2)
Fortunately; Star Trek shows us how exactly to defeat killer robots or computers of any kind. You simply make them explode using illogical arguments.
Captain Kirk: "Everything Harry Mudd says is a lie"
Mudd : "Now listen carefully. I'm lying"
Captain Kirk: "You've murdered hundreds of men"
M5 : "Murder is contrary to the laws of man and God."
And if that doesn't work, try the Chewbacca Defense!
And the first one will be called... (Score:2)
ED 209.
Who is making them? (Score:2)
This .... will not end well. (Score:4, Funny)
This will not end well.
At first, the military will be all like "YAY, autonomous killer robots!"
Then someone will hack some of them... and they'l be all like "boo, they're using it against us and we never saw taht coming"
And then Politicians will be all "we gotta pass laws against being smart n stuff, because Turrhurrerristz"
And then a few years later, we're all just banging rocks together.
ok so my real answer is basically just /facelamp (for when facepalm is not sufficient)
they already exist (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a natural progression (Score:2)
99.99% of the work of automatically killing enemy targets is properly detecting enemy targets and assessing their value. Whether the robot makes the decision to kill with or without human intervention is of great importance philosophically and practicality, but is trivial in terms of engineering.
The reason why the military would want automated target detection and assessment is obvious. This just happens to also be the same prerequisite for completely automated military strikes. Given the relatively mini
kill or be killed (Score:2)
While I strongly prefer requiring humans to make the life-and-death decisions, I see a serious problem with that:
If robot A can make the decision itself, and robot B has to wait for a person to evaluate the information and decide, robot A will act much more quickly and be much more effective. The country with robot A will win the wars, and we'll be living with robot A anyway.
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Both Robots A and B will be used by some enormously wealthy country to put some relatively poor country that we don't like what they're doing under the boot. This allows expansion of global power without friendly casualties, media attention, or voter push-back. Drones don't fight other drones.
If you believe, automate nuclear weapons (Score:3)
Why start small?
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.
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And the soldiers will be like "Hell yeah!" (Score:2)
Until they get replaced by said killer robots. These things will be used to eliminate human jobs. Not just humans.
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Soldiers have qualms of increasing degree when firing on civilians, countrymen, friends and families. AI do not have that problem. This is indeed terrifying.
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Re:conscience (Score:4, Insightful)
This is why the ruling class love killbots so much. A workable enforcement android will bring about the Oppression Singularity. No longer will they have to contend with "idealistic" cops and soldiers who don't blindly follow orders, whatever they may be, or worse yet leak their dirty laundry. No longer will they have to worry about who will "go soft" when the order comes in to fight their own people or take out a target of questionable status. No "untrustworthy" humans between the sociopaths and the rifles of their soldiers and no chance of them turning on their masters.
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Skin color. Its worked for hundreds of years. Why mess with success?
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49% fucked
.. would make an awesome band name!
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dot tumbler dot com
http://xkcd.com/1025/ [xkcd.com]
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Arguments based on "cowardice" are always dumb as shit. Every combatant since the dawn of time has sought ways to reduce their risk profile. You might as well be a British general sipping tea and harrumphing about how those rebels are cowards for hiding behind trees and attacking during Christmas.
We shouldn't build killer robots, but the "cowardice" argument gets us nowhere on the issue.