Terminator Could Really Happen

[John Picard]

The US Navy's Report

Military’s killer robots must learn warrior code

Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands.
The stark warning – which includes discussion of a Terminator-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters – is issued in a hefty report funded by and prepared for the US Navy’s high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research .
The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans. Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.

A simple ethical code along the lines of the “Three Laws of Robotics” postulated in 1950 by Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, will not be sufficient to ensure the ethical behaviour of autonomous military machines.
“We are going to need a code,” Dr Lin said. “These things are military, and they can’t be pacifists, so we have to think in terms of battlefield ethics. We are going to need a warrior code.”


Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics
1 A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm
2 A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law
3 A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law
Introduced in his 1942 short story Runaround

 

[Mr Light]

How are you going to teach a robot the difference between a civilian innocent and an identical "civilian" setting off an IED...?

 

[Tom]

Were fucked! lol

I will take the one of the terminators that look like either Summer Glau or Kristanna Lokken and teach them 'humanity'. )

 

[melancholymecha]

I just read a review in the paper about a book that takes a serious view of the subject, supposedly there are about 40 countries that are doing research on robots in the military. Kinda scary...

 

[bigdaddy]

This is new? The movie is 25 years old and people back then clearly saw the path we were going down.

Live everyday as it is your last because everyday is the first day of the rest of your life, except the day you die.

 

[John Picard]

This is new? The movie is 25 years old and people back then clearly saw the path we were going down.

Live everyday as it is your last because everyday is the first day of the rest of your life, except the day you die.

25 years ago I would have rolled my eyes at you if you said we'd have flat panel monitors, streaming Internet video, and a phone the size of a pack of cigarettes.

This was not "evident" and don't try to claim it was. The original movie was Sci-Fi and it's interesting the reality could imitate art.

 

[Admiral2]

I wouldn't worry about real-life Terminator problems until somebody builds Skynet. When something like that comes on-line, then we're fucked.

 

[bigdaddy]

There is a tech company that is called something Sky Net. It was on The Daily Show I think the other week, but it was a real tech company.

 

[zephramc]

A Terminator-ish future doesn't seem so bad. I mean sure, humanity as a whole is cold, hungry, likely uneducated, and being hunted to extinction by killer robots, but the chicks are hot.

 

[Argus Skyhawk]

I see this as a good thing. I would rather send robots to get destroyed in battle than human beings.

 

[John Picard]

I see this as a good thing. I would rather send robots to get destroyed in battle than human beings.

However, humans could end up becoming collateral damage as well as being brought into the fray to fight robots that have no ethical programming. Ah, what a tangled web we weave.

 

[Lt. Trull]

Ahhh... it's FOUR laws of robotics.... asimov revised it...

4) a robot may not harm humanity or allow humanity to come to harm as long as it doesn't break the first three laws....

 

[nx1701g]

I wouldn't worry about real-life Terminator problems until somebody builds Skynet. When something like that comes on-line, then we're fucked.

The United States is currently working on a new Supercomputer from what I read recently on Yahoo. It will come online in April 2011.

Conincidentally the Judgment day in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles occurs in April 2011.

 

[The Comedian]

I'm thinking that they're considering the kind of warrior code that was implanted into the Bolos (of the Keith Laumer novels). A sense of honor and duty and so forth...

 

[Samurai8472]

Looks around for any Austrian stone faced people that could be killer cyborgs from the future

California's Governor on CNN

OMG! they're already here man!!!

 

[nx1701g]

I see this as a good thing. I would rather send robots to get destroyed in battle than human beings.

Oh I agree that it is a good idea and would save a lot of lives, but you also run the risk of something like - perhaps a better example away from Terminator - the opening scenes of Robocop. Remember that the Enforcement Droid 209 Series was programmed to be a military weapon and its malfunction involved a man being shot to death (nearly blown apart in the Directors Extended Edition).

 

[stonester1]

I see this as a good thing. I would rather send robots to get destroyed in battle than human beings.

Not just collateral damage, but targets. You don't end war by just killing the warriors. You end it by ending the enemy's ability to make war.

Further, a robotized war brings out the danger of a detatched "sanitized" attitude to war, ie that ep of TOS where computers fought the wars and assigned casualties.

War must COST, and I don't mean just in money. It must cost lives, or it loses some of it's crucial prohibitive status.

Plus, as a military member, I don't like the idea of just another field losing out to machines and rendering people unemployed.

Player Piano, anyone? Interestingly, in that book, the Army was just one of two occupations that existed for people. And in the Army, soldiers didn't even really fight, they serviced the machines that did.

Screw that.

 

[SalvorHardin]

I see this as a good thing. I would rather send robots to get destroyed in battle than human beings.

I would rather have to send humans to get destroyed in battle.

A species such as ours needs to feel the burden of human casualties to help prevent us from getting into wars as much as possible.

 

[stonester1]

Yup. True horror, the idea of war becoming a mere inconvenience. Fighting alongside robots? Ok. Depending on them to fight for us? No.

 

[Deckerd]

Conincidentally the Judgment day in Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles occurs in April 2011.

After that, Terminator: The Fourth Iteration Last Time we Counted Chronicles will have a date in January 2019.