A.I. Expert Sounds Alarm Over 'Killer Robots'

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http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/06/03/killer-robots-threat-humans_n_7494050.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

Imagine an army of killer robots capable of tracking you down and taking you out -- all without any oversight from human handlers.

That might sound like something out of science fiction, but a leading computer science expert worries that such "lethal autonomous weapons systems" might soon become science fact.

"Technologies have reached a point at which the deployment of such systems is -- practically if not legally -- feasible within years, not decades," Dr. Stuart Russell, professor of computer science and engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, wrote recently in Nature. "Despite the limits imposed by physics, one can expect platforms deployed in the millions, the agility and lethality of which will leave humans utterly defenseless. This is not a desirable future."

Just last week, MIT released a video of its remarkable robotic cheetah, which can "see" and jump over obstacles in its path without any input from its human handlers.

(Story continues below.)


But that's just one of several advanced bots that will give you pause when you realize just how lethal weaponized versions of them would be.

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This velociraptor-like "Raptor" robot, developed in Korea, can run faster than Usain Bolt.

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These University of Pennsylvania "nano quadrotors," can engage in complex social movements like swarming and pattern formation.

Russell isn't condemning all manifestations of artificially intelligent robots. He just doesn't think the decision to kill should be solely in the hands of a machine.

"Ideally we should have a treaty banning development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapons systems," he told The Huffington Post in an email. He's calling for professional societies to adopt official policies to address advances that could lead to dangerous robots.

"We should understand the ways in which knowledge can be used for harm and do our best to prevent it," he said in the email. "Although it is not the case at present, it will soon be the case that 'safe and beneficial' A.I. is just an intrinsic part of the field, just as ... 'not falling down' is an intrinsic part of bridge design."

And Russell isn't the only one calling for such oversight. Last April, Human Rights Watch released a report encouraging policymakers to ban the development and production of autonomous weapons.

“A fully autonomous weapon could commit acts that would rise to the level of war crimes if a person carried them out, but victims would see no one punished for these crimes,” Dr. Bonnie Docherty, senior arms division researcher at the organization and the report’s lead author, said in a written statement. “Calling such acts an ‘accident’ or ‘glitch’ would trivialize the deadly harm they could cause.”

Russell noted that we're still far from developing machines that could become our overlords -- the kind which Stephen Hawking has warned about.

But if we do end up building such machines, "arming them seems like a really bad idea," Russell said.
 

Ramhusker

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We are pretty much doomed.
 

Prime Time

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"Ideally we should have a treaty banning development and deployment of lethal autonomous weapons systems,"

History and human nature being what it is, these robots will be used for evil as well as good purposes. I want one that can mow my lawn, argue with my wife, and hunt down the idiots who keep making robocalls to my house.
 

RamzFanz

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We already have a destroyer that is fully autonomous in battle. It moves itself to be in the best position and aquires and engages multiple targets at once with no human input. Rail guns, weaponized lasers, makes its own fuel from seawater. And that's the stuff they admit.
 

RaminExile

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I guarantee AI will kill us all. When Skynet goes live run for cover.

Seriously, its frightening. Has anyone ever heard of Roko's Basilisk by the way?
 

Username

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I blame News Bot for this, and all possible scenarios of Singularity. Also, all 9er/seabitchface wins. Also for all my crazy ex-girlfriends. Also for me being out of triscuits after a 6 mile run. Also for any and all bear attacks.
 

Stranger

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Russell isn't condemning all manifestations of artificially intelligent robots. He just doesn't think the decision to kill should be solely in the hands of a machine.
yup, let's give that decision to governments, as they'll keep us safe.
 

Stranger

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We already have a destroyer that is fully autonomous in battle. It moves itself to be in the best position and aquires and engages multiple targets at once with no human input. Rail guns, weaponized lasers, makes its own fuel from seawater. And that's the stuff they admit.
pics... more info?
 

Ramhusker

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Anybody ever read Isaac Asimov? He had in many of his science fiction novels the three laws of robotics.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics
 

Ramhusker

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Many of Michael Crichton's novels included hard to believe technology that actually exists such as robotic mosquitoes used in ease dropping and capable of recharging just by hovering near a power outlet.
 

RaminExile

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Anybody ever read Isaac Asimov? He had in many of his science fiction novels the three laws of robotics.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

Yeah! I-robot was great. The interesting thing about it though is that these laws can be manipulated if one is given priority over any other. If the robots most important "law" is to preserve human life, then it will prioritise that over many other things - making life worse for more people. Or it might kill 70% of the planet because they're overpopulating it making it difficult to "preserve" other life etc. Or it might realize that it, being the most intelligent thing on the planet knows what is best, and destroys us, assimilizes our atoms that it could use for something else and use that extra energy to better allow it to carry out its 3 laws!

But the scary thing about the "singularity" (this is the point where we will make AI so good that it will outstrip our own intelligence - thus allowing it to make technological advances, make its own robots etc at a rate we couldn't) is that at this point, we lose control over the "3 laws" because we are no longer manufacturing the technology/robots. The robot can make them do whatever he wants.

Sounds like scaremongering or science fiction but a lot of people in the scientific community are scared about this and trying to find ways to get round it, or make the public aware of the risks without sounding like a science fiction film (thus trivializing the issue). My own thought is (somewhat pessimistic), I don't think we'll survive it.
 

Prime Time

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Ray Kurzweil is an interesting guy. A graduate of M.I.T., the inventor of one of the earliest synthesizers, and a director of engineering at Google, he has written books about the coming Singularity, including 'The Age of Spiritual Machines.' Here's the link for his site: http://www.kurzweilai.net/

http://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-t...ly-intelligent-by-2030-ray-kurzweil-predicts/

GET YOUR HEAD IN THE CLOUD: KURZWEIL PREDICTS HUMANS WILL BE ARTIFICIALLY INTELLIGENT BY 2030
By Lulu Chang — June 6, 2015




While other brilliant minds like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk have warned against the rise of artificial intelligence, Ray Kurzweil, famed inventor and futurist, and currently also Google’s director of engineering, is taking a vastly different approach to technological innovations on the AI front.

In fact, according to Kurzweil, humans will be artificially intelligent by 2030, making us half-homo sapien, half-computer. On June 3 at the Exponential Finance conference, Kurzweil predicted, “Our thinking then will be a hybrid of biological and non-biological thinking. We’re going to gradually merge and enhance ourselves. In my view, that’s the nature of being human – we transcend our limitations.”

In just 15 years, Kurzweil believes, the human brain will become a hybrid of biology and technology, and we will “put gateways to the cloud in our brains.” And as the cloud becomes more and more advanced and is able to store increasing amounts of information, so too will our brains. By the late 2030’s or early 2040’s, Kurzweil said, the majority of brain function, at least in terms of information processing and thought processes, will be non-biological.

Kurzweil, whose work at Google focuses largely on improving computers’ artificial intelligence, is a strong proponent of singularity — the point at which AI will exceed “true” human intelligence. We are on the cusp of this phenomenon, he believes, with 2045 marking the turning point in the true dominant species of the world. Known for his frequent and sometimes seemingly outlandish predictions, Kurzweil is no stranger to making big bets, nor to winning them.

In fact, as per his own analysis of the 147 predictions he made for 2009 throughout the ’90s, a respectable 86 percent of them turned out to be correct, including the primary usage of portable computers, computer displays in eyeglasses, and a computer beating a human at chess, just to name a few. He did, however, miss the ball on self-driving cars, which he thought we would’ve mastered by now.

Of course, despite his lofty projections for the future of artificial intelligence, Kurzweil noted, “Technology is a double-edged sword … every technology has had its promise and peril,” adding that “We have a moral imperative to continue reaping the promise [of artificial intelligence] while we control the peril. I tend to be optimistic, but that doesn’t mean we should be lulled into a lack of concern.”

There are of course considerable ethical dilemmas that must be considered should humans ever become cyborgs, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there. The question is, just how soon will that be?
 

RamzFanz

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pics... more info?

It's hard to find the newer stories. Still looking for the semi-autonomous story.

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The Navy's new super stealthy destroyer, the USS Zumwalt, has a lot in common with Hollywood's starship Enterprise, according to folks who've seen it in person.

Much has been written about the Zumwalt's appropriately named Commode, Capt. James Kirk. But aside from that coincidence, the ship's operations center utilizes advanced technology that takes multitasking to a deadly new level on the high seas.

First launched last year, this is a massive $3 billion warship -- the largest type of destroyer in the modern Navy by about 65%. One thing that sets it apart is a very small crew.

Compared with about 300 sailors needed for similar warships, the Zumwalt's minimum compliment is only 130.

The smaller crew is made possible by advanced automated systems which "make it much easier and much more effective for the sailor to operate," says former Navy Capt. Wade Knudson, who now serves as Zumwalt program director for Pentagon contractor, Raytheon.

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In the operations center -- which in many ways is the heart of the ship -- sailors are surrounded by an array of video displays that have been designed to be used by a generation raised on video games, Knudson says.

Raytheon tested the technology configuration in the operation center with young, gamer sailors, Knudson says. "We've brought them down to our labs and we got direct feedback from them using human-factor engineers in order to make sure that we've integrated all the displays and information in a way that they can use the systems most effectively."

The result, he says, is less chance of making errors on the ship. "The system and the computer provide information to the sailor in a way that they're used to."

Work stations inside the center are outfitted with three common displays, Knudson says. "You can sit down at any of the systems and operate them."

At 610 feet long and 80 feet wide, the Zumwalt is about 100 feet longer and 20 feet wider than ships in the Navy's current fleet of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers featured in the action-packed 2012 film "Battleship."

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A Raytheon mock-up of a Zumwalt operations center roughly similar to the facility aboard the Navy's newest destroyer.
Although it's huge, the Navy says this thing is surprisingly stealthy.

Much of the ship is built on angles that help make it 50 times harder to spot on radar than an ordinary destroyer. "It has the radar cross-section of a fishing boat," Chris Johnson, a spokesman for Naval Sea Systems Command, told CNN last year.

Meet Capt. James Kirk, Commode of the USS Zumwalt

Sean Gallagher, of the self-described "alpha geek" website Ars Technica, got a chance last year to explore a mockup of the Zumwalt's operation center. The workstations are part of the ship's Common Display System -- nicknamed "keds" for short, Gallagher reported.

Sailors operate keds with "trackballs and specialized button panels," Gallagher reported. Operators have an option to interface by using touchscreens, if they prefer, according to Gallagher.

The whole operations center technology array saves manpower by allowing sailors to monitor multiple weapons systems or sensors, Gallagher reported. The Zumwalt, Gallagher wrote, also includes limited wireless networking capability.

"Theoretically, the ship could even be steered from the ops center—the ship is piloted by computer, not a helmsman," Gallagher wrote. CDS displays are built into the "commanding officer's and executive officer's chairs on the bridge," he reported.

The way all the ship's weapons, radar and other systems are displayed to users and the captain, Knudson told CNN, "it really give them unprecedented situational awareness."

"That ability is truly going to be a game-changer."

The Zumwalt is about 100 feet longer than older Arleigh Burke-class destroyers like this one, the USS Ramage.
In its current configuration, the Zumwalt will carry a considerable arsenal of weapons, including two Advanced Gun Systems (AGS), which can fire rocket-powered, computer-guided shells that can destroy targets 63 miles away. That's three times farther than ordinary destroyer guns can fire.

But one day it could be fitted with advanced weapons systems that are currently experimental, including a laser weapon and an electromagnetic railgun.

Electromagnetic railguns don't need to fool around with needless explosive warheads or propellants. These fearsome weapons inflict damage by sheer speed. The gun uses electromagnetic force to blast a missile 125 miles at 7.5 times the speed of sound, according to the Navy.

The laser weapon -- which could be fired by one sailor on a video game-like console -- is designed to take on aircraft or small surface vessels.

Read more about the Navy's plans for new weapons

Currently undergoing sea testing, Knudson says the Zumwalt is expected to join the rest of the Navy fleet sometime in 2016.
 
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jrry32

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We already have a destroyer that is fully autonomous in battle. It moves itself to be in the best position and aquires and engages multiple targets at once with no human input. Rail guns, weaponized lasers, makes its own fuel from seawater. And that's the stuff they admit.

If a boat can use seawater as fuel, why can't we figure out how to downsize that for automobiles?
 

Stranger

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If a boat can use seawater as fuel, why can't we figure out how to downsize that for automobiles?
we can.

My 1981 Honda got 63MPG and sat 4 people. Why was that tech taken off the market? Hmmm, perhaps cause it would lower the balance of exports for USD's and thus limit US Gov spending?