Archive for the 'Rise of the Machines' Category
Why is SOCOM Lying About Domestic Drone Activities?
June 28th, 2012Via: Public Intelligence: A spokesman for U.S. Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) has provided statements to publications in New Hampshire and Oregon indicating that information regarding domestic drone activities provided by Public Intelligence is inaccurate, despite confirmations from the offices of two U.S. Senators. Following our publication last week of a map of current and proposed […]
The American War Racket
June 26th, 2012Via: Daily Reckoning: Our president is a portrait of failure and homicide… According to The New York Times he personally approves the list of unfortunates his drones will assassinate. And for what? Philip Giraldi does the “Terrorism Arithmetic”: Only three American citizens were kidnapped by overseas terrorists in 2011 (in Somalia, Afghanistan, and Iraq, all […]
The Case Against Autonomous Killing Machines
June 22nd, 2012Via: io9: In his conversation with io9, Wallach seemed frustrated that some people see this issue as something that’s too futuristic to care about. “We’re at a potential inflection point in the development of autonomous weaponry,” he said. “That inflection point won’t last for a long period of time, and if we wait too long, […]
‘My brief, backbreaking, rage-inducing, low-paying, dildo-packing time inside the online-shipping machine.’
June 21st, 2012The pickers are being replaced by robots. Instead of people walking around and picking products (as described in the piece below), robots pick up the racks and deliver them to a queue where a handful of remaining human workers box up the orders. The main player in this type of automation is Kiva Systems, and […]
U.S. Needs Another 600 Humans to Fly Its Robot Planes
June 15th, 2012Via: Wired: The Pentagon doesn’t have nearly enough people to operate its growing fleet of flying robots. Right now, the US Air Force is short nearly 600 drone pilots and sensor operators. And that’s before the military carries out its plans to more than double its armada of remotely operated Reaper aircraft by 2015. Air […]
Apple’s Siri to Ride Shotgun in Cars From Nine Major Auto Manufacturers
June 14th, 2012Via: Gizmag: As part of its keynote speech on the opening day of this year’s WWDC, Apple mentioned that Siri will be featured in vehicles from no less than nine major global automakers. Not only will Siri be making her much anticipated iPad debut, but she’ll also be joining you on your daily commute. Apple […]
What Facebook Knows
June 14th, 2012Via: MIT / Technology Review: If Facebook were a country, a conceit that founder Mark Zuckerberg has entertained in public, its 900 million members would make it the third largest in the world. It would far outstrip any regime past or present in how intimately it records the lives of its citizens. Private conversations, family […]
64 Drone Bases on American Soil
June 14th, 2012Via: Danger Room: There are 64 drone bases on American soil. That includes 12 locations housing Predator and Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles, which can be armed. Public Intelligence, a non-profit that advocates for free access to information, released a map of military UAV activities in the United States on Tuesday. Assembled from military sources — […]
The Uncanny Valley – First English Translation Authorized and Reviewed by Mori
June 12th, 2012Slashdot posts a lot of garbage, but this reminds me of why I still persevere with that site. Via: IEEE: More than 40 years ago, Masahiro Mori, then a robotics professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, wrote an essay on how he envisioned people’s reactions to robots that looked and acted almost human. In […]
DARPA Wants Robots to Manufacture Military Uniforms
June 8th, 2012Via: Wired: The company on the receiving end of Darpa’s award, SoftWear Automation Inc., has so far developed “a conceptual” version of just the automated system that the agency’s after. The basic principle behind the company’s innovation, according to its website, is a robotic system that relies on an extremely precise monitoring of a given […]
