BS: Robots at war???

Subject: BS: Robots at war???
From: *daylia*
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 11:08 AM

I found the story at this link most chilling and it's about 30 below out there today!
Click on "Military Robots Trained for War", and brace yourselves ...

You know at least with human soldiers there's a CHANCE of human compassion getting through even in the midst of war, but with robots?
What an awful scenario ... how can we STOP this insanity?!?

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 11:37 AM

Scary stuff.Shades of Terminator. In the same way that all those disaster movies over the years prefigured September 11.

Here is a piece in todays Gurardian on the same lines - essentially they are both recycling the same stuff - "The war after next".

Interesting in both pieces that they clean it all up by talking about "the battlefield" - leaving aside the reality tha in wars from now on the "battlefield" tends to mean cities and towns, full of ordinary people getting blown to bits.

What we need are Asimov's Robotic Laws, especially the one about no robot being able to harm a human being.

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Grab
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 11:45 AM

Did you read the same article I did?

"I don't have any problem writing to iRobot, saying 'I'm sorry your robot died, can we get another?"' said Colonel Bruce Jette, the Army's point man on robot deployment, who accompanied the first, $45,000 iRobot "PackBots" into the field in Afghanistan. "That's a lot easier letter to write than to a father or mother."

...

Jette says robots will never fully replace soldiers.

"None of them," he says, "are as powerful as the 2.5-pound gray blob inside your head."

So robots are being used for remote monitoring on the battlefield. Sounds like it could save a few lives, instead of forcing our soldiers to go down into cave complexes and get killed in ambushes. Also sounds like they're considering mounting a weapon so it can be used a remote weapon by someone with a handset (think BigTrak with a gun), which also seems a damn good idea.

It's really quite old news in any case. All armies (and most police forces) have been using remote-control bomb-disposal robots for well over a decade, so the failure of armies to produce anything like this up to now is actually the scariest thing - it indicates that until now it was better to throw a human life at the problem instead of using some disposable gadget, bcos the human life was worth less than the gadget. It's only now the price of the gadget has come down that the gadget is worth less than a soldier.

Yes, the first paragraph sounds like a terrifying vision. And then you read on and realise that they can't do it, they don't even have any idea of *how* to do it, and the army don't actually want it. In other words, the first paragraph is 100% invented by the author of the article for the purposes of selling the article with that "wow" factor.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Bobert
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 11:59 AM

The only problem is that all this money is going to be spent on a technology that is virtually useless as adversaries learn that there is a definate advantage to playing at home. Yes, this stuff would be fine under the old rules but the old rules just don't work anymore.

So, yeah, when armies retreat into urban centers and use large civilian populations as shields, the robot's are going to spend more time scratching their heads (or whatever they're going to have) trying to differentiat the *good* Mohammmed from the *bad* Mohammed.

But thats the US for you. Good at figuring out new ways of killing folks and lousy on thrying to find ways not to...

Nevermind. I'm kind thread creepin; here a tad...

Bobot

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: *daylia*
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 12:05 PM

Graham, I sure hope you're right ... And I hope it was too early in the morning for me to properly digest everything in that story too. If it could ever be 'properly digested' by anyone with a working stomach that is ...

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 12:40 PM

I hope the robots or the people who run the robots do have those kind of concerns, Bobert. But I suspect that the kind of people who deploy the largest collection of weapons of mass destruction on the planet (by a very very long way) aren't going to be too worried about things like that. They'll more likely reckon that so long as they can avoid casualties on their own side nobody who matters will really care too much about dead foreigners.

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Greg F.
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 01:04 PM

And, unfortunately, considering the current situation in the U.S., it appears that they reckon correctly.

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: artbrooks
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 01:21 PM

A robot to clear the minefields that generations of armies have left behind?   Sounds like a great idea to me...beats 180 pounds of meatbot and a hand-held mine detector.

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: *daylia*
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 01:29 PM

AHA! Thanks for finding the up-side to this scenario, artbrooks. Knew there had to be one ...

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 01:34 PM

Robots who stick to Asimov's Laws of Robotics, fine. Robots which are capable of killing human beings, that is slightly different. (And noone has yet worked out a way of building those laws into robots so far.)

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Ebbie
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 01:48 PM

Did you see the TV special that demonstrated a robotic recon plane that practically fits into the palm of one's hand? It is programmed then released to fly across mountain ridges to photograph what it 'sees' and return to its sender.

Considering that when one builds a better mousetrap, someone else creates a bigger mouse... it's gonna be a different world out there.

If we could only educate ourselves into an understanding that physical war is archaic, unnecessary and obscene- but NO. War will be around as long as people's adrenal systems get a charge out of it.

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 01:52 PM

Depends, of course, on the humans doing the programming. Now, if it were just possible to work some of that programming into humans. . . .

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: GUEST,Forum Lurker
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 02:04 PM

I am not entirely secure about the idea of "An American must obey the orders of his/her superiors, unless this would violate the First Law" being hardwired.

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Ed.
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 02:12 PM

Ever since humans (and hence war) have existed, technology has been used to gain an upper hand.

I'm sure that the tribe that figued out fire before their enemies used it to their own advantage.

I don't see this as 'chilling' It's evitable. The purpose of war is to destroy the enemy with minimal casualties on your own side

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 03:36 PM

Sieg Heil...

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Don Firth
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 03:41 PM

If a battlefield consisted of nothing but robots, that might not be a bad thing.

I recall a scenario a friend of mine came up with a few decades back. First we have the ballistic missile. As a countermeasure, we come up with the anti-ballistic missile. But to assure that the attack is successful, we mount anti-anti-ballistic missiles on our ballistic missile. But to buttress up our defensive measures, we mount anti-anti-anti-ballistic missiles on our anti-ballistic missiles (I'm getting lost). Anyway, you get the picture.

If view of this, the only casualties of World War III would be the world's population of polar bears, killed by falling junk.

Don Firth
(That's called "gallows humor," folks.)

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Ed.
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 03:41 PM

Meaning?

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: *daylia*
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 03:52 PM

"I don't see this as 'chilling' It's evitable. The purpose of war is to destroy the enemy with minimal casualties on your own side."

Some typo Ed! I even looked 'evitable' up in Webster's Dictionary and it comes from the Latin evitabilis, from evitare meaning "to shun ... capable of being avoided".

I'll go with the typo! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Ed.
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 04:17 PM

I did, of course, mean inevitable

I am as scared, and worried as anyone here about the likelyhood of war. It's wrong.

I was merely making the point that technology is bound to be used by the military.

I do wonder how sneering at me for making a typographic mistake helps anyone

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 04:34 PM

What I meant there (Sieg Heil) was that bowing down to "the inevitable" is treating it as some kind of God, in this case a God of War.

It isn't so many years ago and you had people writing, for example, that slavery has existed in every society (which was not that far off the truth) and that meant it was unrealsitic to pretend that we could get rid of it. But that assumotion was wrong. Slavery is not an inevitable part of human society - and nor need we assume that war is.

"War" in the sense of organised comflicts between people who have never even seen each other, is not in fact soemthing that has always been with us - but even if it had, we live in a very different world, where it is possible for us to destroy ourselves completely. Radically different circumstances require radically different ways of doing things.

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From:
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 06:28 PM

Ed I wasn't sneering at you! I just couldn't resist pointing out a most
coincidental - and hopeful - typo.

And you're right - why develop the technology if there's no intent to use it?

But since the days of discovering fire surely we've evolved in more ways than just technologically! Like socially and 'spiritually'.
Maybe that is just wishful thinking though ...

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Gareth
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 08:06 PM

Mmmm ! And What happens when we run out of Robots ?????

Gareth - An Azimov fan !

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: *daylia*
Date: 23 Jan 03 - 11:05 PM

Thanks for posting 'Asimov's Laws of Robotics', McGrath - insightful stuff. There is beneficial use for such technology - environmental cleanup being one that really beckons.

But I think Don hit it right on the head - it depends on the 'progamming' of the humans doing the programming.

Coincidentally enough, "Terminator" is the movie showing on prime TV right now, and my son tells me that "Terminator III" is due out next summer. Pardon me for sounding paranoid but between international news stories and movies and TV programming it's seems people are being 'programmed' to accept this use of robotics as inevitable. "Sieg Heil". And that is scary stuff.

daylia

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Grab
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 08:24 AM

Daylia, the army are actually way behind the curve on this one. I've previously mentioned remote-control bomb-disposal robots, which are very old technology. The latest-and-greatest are search-and-rescue robots, which are little mini things which can crawl through holes in collapsed buildings to locate survivors. IIRC they were used in the WTC, and they're showing definite promise.

BTW, there's a slight misnomer in calling these things "robots". When someone says "robot" to you, you think of something self-contained, possibly self-aware, certainly capable of making decisions for itself about what it does. In fact, this is not the case - every one of these so-called "robots" is actually about as robotic as your kid's remote-control car. They're all controlled by a human operator with a remote-control link, with a TV camera transmitting the "bug's eye view" back to the operator. The robot plane I'll admit is a stage further on - this is as robotic as "BigTrak" in that you give it a path to follow and it blindly goes round that path.

Bobert, the point is that without the robots, it's impossible to know what's going on. The robots are sent in as surveillance to see what's down there. The cave complexes in Afghanistan are a prime example - capturing/killing fighters in there is incredibly dangerous, bcos the defenders have had ample opportunity to rig booby-traps, ambushes, etc. As you say, the home side has a major advantage. Send a robot in first, and if the robot gets blown up then you know where to take extra care, otherwise a half-dozen guys turn round a corner and get mown down by an Afghani with a machine-gun.

Graham.

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: JudeL
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 08:32 AM

The big question that most of the frothing at the mouth politicians don't , won't or can't answer is just how killing a lot of people who are themselves suffering is going to stop fanatics from being recruited , brainwashed and used as tools of terror, or how declaring war is going to force Sadam to give up these weapons that it is claimed he has rather than give him the excuse to use them.

I know myself well enough that although intelectually I believe that negotiation is almost always the most effective long term solution to problems , I am also aware that I am not such a pacifist that I would not defend my family against an individual intent on harming them. Because of that I cannot say (without being a hypocrite) that there is never a time when war is the only option remaining other than surrendering and accepting a status quo that is totally incompatible with your personal values. But even though I am not a total pacifist I still do not believe that declaring war will do anything other than change some of those who are not currently supporting sadam into active enemies (having someone trying to kill you does that).

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Kim C
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 12:32 PM

I thought Robot Wars was a great show, but our PBS affiliate stopped carrying it...

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: DougR
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 01:00 PM

I believe you nailed it Graham.

DougR

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Don Firth
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 01:30 PM

I remember reading a science-fiction story way back in the Fifties about an army of practically indestructable hunter-killer robots. When the war was won, one of the robots malfunctioned. It couldn't tell friend from foe, and it couldn't be shut off.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: Kim C
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 01:32 PM

Do I hear Twilight Zone music?

Subject: RE: BS: Robots at war???
From: *daylia*
Date: 24 Jan 03 - 01:46 PM

The more I think about this, the more I'm leaning toward a make-money-for-the-media-and-distract-'em-all-from-what's-really-at-issue interpretation of this story.

What nation would entrust it's vital "Defence Dept", especially one as complicated as described in McGrath's link from the 'Guardian' above, to a computerized system vulnerable not only to viruses and power outages but to every geeky computer hack in the country? Sheesh, by the time my kids were in Grade 6 they knew how to 'hack in' to the schools report card files (much to my chagrin!)

Just a thought ... and thanks for the info Graham ...

daylia