Didn't these guys see 'The Matrix'?Here's a little update on the use of robots in the ongoing Iraq War (via Wired's "Danger Room" blog):
"After years of development, three 'special weapons observation remote reconnaissance direct action system' (SWORDS) robots have deployed to Iraq, armed with M249 machine guns. The 'bots "haven't fired their weapons yet," Michael Zecca, the SWORDS program manager, tells DANGER ROOM. "But that'll be happening soon."
That's ominous. There are currently only three SWORDS-bots in Iraq, but Zecca is paraphrased in the article saying he thinks that number will increase dramatically once the Army gets to see these droids in a firefight. This guy Zecca sounds kinda like a geek gone bad, a robo-dork who's just a little too excited about seeing his war-bots begin to slaughter people. This isn't BattleBots.
But that's really only part of it. The larger concern for me and (I think) most people, is the inevitable man vs. machine battle royale that's just around the corner. Now they've got guns!
Here's a link to a National Defense Magazine article on the same topic and a New Scientist blog post from April about the ethics of robot-on-robot violence.
posted by dan @ 9:47 AM
12 Comments:
These things are super interesting, and totally terrifying. As a layman I want to know how they work and play them in roleplaying games. As a luddite who distrusts the government, holy shit.
Our best plan to dispose of nuclear waste is to ship it across the country on Amtrack, and bury it in the desert along a fault line. I don't think we should be arming robots.
Plus, what if one of these SWORDS-bots gets his mitts on a copy of "Short Circuit"? There's no way we could trust them to do our bidding if they grok the preciousness of life.
Johnny 5 is alive, indeed!
all jokes aside, what is it that is so scary about them?
terminator 2 and the like are great fairy tales but the truth is robots are just machines and the chances of them becoming self-aware are well, laughable.
I am justifiably afraid of any poorly tested technology, or any technology with inadequately established guidelines and restraints, like:
guns, plastics, television, any of the 25,000 chemicals that are patented each year and show up in the human body, lead, mercury, cars, oil, coal-fired power plants, information patenting, Vioxx....and of course the cotton gin.
This situation worries me for several reasons. First, I think it's a likely catalyst to increased callousness regarding the dead in Iraq and just how it is that we go about creating the dead in Iraq. I'm not saying that I like the idea of American soldiers being in harm's way, but the situation in Iraq is in shambles, and the more unmanned military units (air and ground) that we put in charge of patrolling the area, the less in touch we're going to be with the people that are there and the suffering that's happening.
Second, can you imagine the morale of the Iraqi people, already living in the middle of an intense and bloody civil war, when they start sharing the streets with gun-toting robots? This is not going to help them.
As far as consciousness in machines go, I think you're being startlingly short-sighted by putting it off as "laughable." While it's true that we're not there yet, you must surely be aware that incredible amounts of resources in the form of money and the brainpower, are being funneled into research projects working toward AI. To me, it's a technology that's not there yet, but it would be foolish to say it never will be. Not the mention the fact that defective, abortive attempts at intelligence in machines are probably even more dangerous than genuinely creating intelligence in a machine.
Now, if your comment was merely to point out that spontaneous consciousness in war-bots was laughable, I agree. It's not going to just happen without our involvement. But our involvement toward this goal is rigorously well-funded and supported at the moment. I invite you to come visit Cambridge and the new and incredibly expensive Frank Gehry building at MIT that houses CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), the largest research lab on campus with over 5,000 full-time researchers.
Another point: I don't have a problem with intelligent machines. I only am worried that the first intelligent machines we develop are probably going to be war-machines.
Come on Dan, AI has been only 30 years away since at least the 60s, most especially in Minsky's lab. They've been hacking neural networks for years, and they still can't beat Deep Blue.
Besides, all good technology comes from the DoD budget, not NSF. Why? Because the Pentagon holds researchers (Poindexter notwithstanding) accountable for product. This is the natural state of science in this country, and it apparently works.
Come on nothing, Joe. The argument that because it hasn't happened yet it's never going to happen is utterly unsound and you know it. Not to mention that it's surprisingly ludditic from someone such as yourself.
And I think you meant to say that all "effective" technology comes from the DoD budget, because I don't know how "good" I think all these missles and war-bots are. Effective? Yes. Let's just not think too hard about what it means for these guys to have a high effectiveness level. Because that's why we're putting war-bots in Iraq, anyway, right? So that we don't have to think about it as much?
Yes yes yes I know the internet was some kind of awesome DoD thing (kind of) but it also doesn't quite seem like the same thing as intelligent war machines. And I'm sorry, but if you chalk intelligent war-machines up as being pure fiction for the forseeable human future, I think you're being willfully ignorant of how hard our government works to invent crazy stuff to kill people with.
One other note: as for there being a "natural state of science in this country" I say pshaw. Tell that to Jobs and the Woz changing the world in their garage.
And I'm sorry, but if you chalk intelligent war-machines up as being pure fiction for the forseeable human future, I think you're being willfully ignorant of how hard our government works to invent crazy stuff to kill people with.
i agree completely with this statement; our govt is def. working hard to figure out how to kill people with crazy war machines.
what i was getting at though was that if you think AI is right around the corner, even with "5,000 full-time researchers" working on it, you are being willfully ignorant of the kinds of mathematics and engineering required to make this happen. we just aren't there yet.
when mathematicians have derived a set of working equations to describe human intelligence i'll be much more worried.
Firstly, I just want to reiterate that I don't think the idea of AI is something to worry about. I think that a human race unprepared to deal with the intense ethical issues of AI is something to worry about.
But I think you're right, Sean. And though I am largely ignorant of the mathematics and engineering required for AI, it's not willful. I think, though, that even if we say it's a long way off--which it is--that's a fundamentally different statement than it being impossible, which is what I thought I was hearing from you and Joe in previous comments.
I don't think it's unworthy of preparatory thought. We are caught unprepared by our own technology all the time, and I think it's high time that we try to learn from that and actually attempt to be ready for technology of this magnitude. 5,000 researchers is not insignificant, and that's only in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In fact, I'm sure there's more than that in Cambridge. And AI isn't even MIT's specialty. Other institutes are undoubtedly pouring even more resources into it. You can be sure our 5,000 are the tip of the iceberg. One day machines will think. I believe this.
you know i was thinking more about this today and i think that the idea of robots taking over or killing us, etc., is a very western concept. it's shown all the time on tv, movies, and in literature. pop culture is full of robots killing humans. terminator, war games, the mechanical hound from 451, omnius...
sure there are 'good robots' as well, but as computers have become more complex and more prevelant in our daily lives i think the hysteria has increased.
comparing this to japan, where about 75% of the world's robots reside* is pretty interesting, because robots there are not only tolerated but are embraced.
and i think in part it stems from the fact that for the last 50, almost 60 years now, japanese people have been exposed to robots in pop culture through cutesy, friendly, helping superheroes starting with astroboy.
imagine if mickey mouse had been a robot and thanks to his robotic body, he could assist people and even save them from life or death situations. now imagine that every person born since mickey mouse has been around, since childhood, understood that robots were here to help, not to destroy.
now take a look at japan today. land of robots. and people seem pretty cool with it if you ask me.
*that stat is based on a bbc documentary i watched recently.
i dunno. just a thought.
Yes! And I think you and I are getting at the same point. It's about using your media to prepare for a future that isn't here yet. To some extent (and this is an endlessly debateable point) cultural productions are a self-fulfilling machine. Like all the computer scientists and engineers out there who grew up reading Asimov's and Gernsback's and whomever else's visionary, but ultimately groundless descriptions of things like "positronic brains" (Asimov's brain-analog for robots) and then grew up and invented microchips. That's what scares me about what Sean has identified as the Western conception of robots as inherently dangerous: that instead of building robots to help us, we're building robots with guns. This has to be, in part, because of our cultural memory of robots as the epitome of cold, calculating ruthlessness.
I agree with you whole-heartedly, Sean. I in no way want to halt the development of robots or thinking machines. But they WILL be created in our own image, and I don't like what that could potentially look like. It's tough to cuddle up to the machine pictured in this post. It's not exactly Astroboy.
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