"Only five countries actually want to ban killer robots"

[DoubleY]

Thanks @TopWargamer AKA TopWarKek for the article.

 

 

 

Last month, Russia announced a new mobile robot guard designed to gun down trespassers at ballistic missile bases. The twist? They don’t need human permission. The mobile robot, which resembles a gun-mounted tank, can be set to patrol an area and fire on anything it identifies as a target. The announcement came shortly after Russia’s deputy prime minister had called on the military to develop robots with artificial intelligence that can "strike on their own."

 

Russia is one of many countries developing self-guided killer robots. None have hit the battlefield yet, but this week the issue came to the United Nations.

 

Eighty-seven countries participated in the summit on lethal autonomous weapons, which concluded today with a resolution to address the issue again in November. The summit was an informal meeting of experts hosted by the UN Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons, the body that bans or restricts the use of weapons that "cause unnecessary or unjustifiable suffering to combatants or... affect civilians indiscriminately."

 

"only 5" You'd think it'd be more. I guess the threat still isn't that big.,, yet. 

 

I personally don't want robots fighting our wars. I don't ever think technology (robot's in particular) will be as smart as us humans.

[daemonowner]

Exactly zero of the surveyed countries in our study agreed to impose legislation to prepare for Godzilla.

[DoubleY]

Exactly zero of the surveyed countries in our study agreed to impose legislation to prepare for Godzilla.

Let's be honest here, how likely is Godzilla vs. building a killer robot? I think a robot is more likely 

[qwertywarrior]

only 5 ......

[Imabigmac]

Some people in Canada want to ban them, I don't the what the political parties think. 

[Kamil]

People seem to have this fear that robots will either be really bad at doing a very specialized task that they are literally built to do compared to humans, or that they will "be evil" based on... something.

Personally, while I wouldn't put robots autonomously guarding anything with lethal weaponry RIGHT NOW (especially not without them needing human authorization before using the weaponry, something I consider a valid middle-ground) it's definitely something that could be researched, and I don't object to implementing it eventually.

[Sharp_3yE]

Robots fighting our wars in the future could be good in one way. Less humans dying onn the battlefield. Though, if a country invades another then they could use robots to whipe out a large population. Who knows what this could mean. Could be bad or good. It could work better then human guards or be more destructive. All about how its implemented. Though with continued tech getting better it is kinda inevitable.

[RuecanOnRails]

 

That is all.

[soup]

Robots fighting our wars in the future could be good in one way. Less humans dying onn the battlefield.

 

I seem to remember a Star Trek (TOS)? (the more I think of it the more convinced I become that it wasn't ST TOS at all) episode. where a war had been going for years and years and.. People were declared dead then their own side put them into an evaporater to kill them.  There was no real desire to end the war as all deaths were 'clean', people weren't 'eating rats', buildings weren't being destroyed etc. I feel a similar situation would arise if all the fighting was done by robots.

[jezza39]

Weapons like the Phalanax CIWS, which automatically track and destroy inbound aircraft and missiles, have been around since the 90s I believe.

 

Human error accounts for far more aircraft disasters than everything else combined, autopilot errors count for a negligable amount (either pilots don't know how to use it or it disengages and the pilots forget how to fly the aeroplane). Properly tested robots will be far smarter than Humans, and more reliable.

 

The big difference of course, is humans have 'instincts' and emotions. These probably won't ever be replicated properly. 

[TechFan@ic]

Whenever there's an issue that involves an inanimate object ending human life I always vote no.

[soup]

. Properly tested robots will be far smarter than Humans, and more reliable.

 

 

Only up to a point, ANY electronic equipment can and will fail, try switching off and on again some form of 'rampaging' killer robot.

[jezza39]

Only up to a point, ANY electronic equipment can and will fail, try switching off and on again some form of 'rampaging' killer robot.

 

Of course, but how many military rampage killers have we had too? That US Army Sergeant in Afghanistan for instance. The My Lai massacre in Vietnam. People will go wrong more than robots, but obviously it's harder to trust a machine.

[Thorium19]

One step closer to terminator. We already have skynet *cough*google*cough* now we're getting the robots closer to reality.

[Sharp_3yE]

I seem to remember a Star Trek (TOS)? (the more I think of it the more convinced I become that it wasn't ST TOS at all) episode. where a war had been going for years and years and.. People were declared dead then their own side put them into an evaporater to kill them.  There was no real desire to end the war as all deaths were 'clean', people weren't 'eating rats', buildings weren't being destroyed etc. I feel a similar situation would arise if all the fighting was done by robots.

hey man. I'm not saying war is good. Fact is that war happens. I'm not I favor of war but when things are bad or someone wants tk onvate your homeland and control you then its nice to have protection. If a robot can save lives of sone soilders then maybe its not a bad thing.

[soup]

I'm not I favor of war <snip> If a robot can save lives of sone soilders then maybe its not a bad thing.

 

Nor am I .  Basically what I am saying is war should be HELL that way people will try not to get into one.  Robots doing the 'killing' and 'dying' cleans war up to much.  If it was people who died horribly perhaps the politicians will try harder not to get involved in a war.

[Sharp_3yE]

Nor am I .  Basically what I am saying is war should be HELL that way people will try not to get into one.  Robots doing the 'killing' and 'dying' cleans war up to much.  If it was people who died horribly perhaps the politicians will try harder not to get involved in a war.

Except more people are still dying. There still will be human casualties but it would just be less. I would say, think of it like more drones(of course without someone directly controlling it). Also, don't forget about the civilians that are getting in the cross fire. Robots could also help protect a group of soldiers who are in a tuff situation. They could easily identify threats from further away maybe and have better accuracy to aid soldiers. It wouldn't be just robots fighting wars first of all. There is no way wars will become who has the better toys. It's still land that people live in, soldiers that are on the battle field, and civilians getting hurt in some way.

[Misanthrope]

Weapons like the Phalanax CIWS, which automatically track and destroy inbound aircraft and missiles, have been around since the 90s I believe.

 

Human error accounts for far more aircraft disasters than everything else combined, autopilot errors count for a negligable amount (either pilots don't know how to use it or it disengages and the pilots forget how to fly the aeroplane). Properly tested robots will be far smarter than Humans, and more reliable.

 

The big difference of course, is humans have 'instincts' and emotions. These probably won't ever be replicated properly. 

 

This was covered in the tek one week ago and I agree with their reasoning: They're not completely independent robots, there's still a human element that controls them, if there's AI there's still people who code the AI and people who program in directives. There's a potential to great abuse by overzealous general types and just code "shoot to kill all aircraft" and then when a commercial plane is shot down they will claim "Oh it's unfortunate but the machine did it, sorry that was a bug" and because of the usual secrecy bullshit you'd rarely would be able to prove otherwise.

[Nineshadow]

And those robots will probably be linked to a server which will be linked to another server which will be linked to the internet and voila!

Hackers would be able to control killer robots