Automated Killer Robots ‘Threat to Humanity’
February 27th, 2008Top soil depletion is a far more dire threat to humanity, but it is absolutely true that autonomous killing machines are what the military wants, most of all.
FYI: Neuroscience is the convenient term for this absurd and dangerous waste of resources on many university campuses. University neuroscience departments exist atop a mountain of Department of Defense research grants.
Via: AFP:
Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.
“They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.
There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.
The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.
But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.
It we are not careful, he said, that could change.
Military leaders “are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war,” he said.
Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.
South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.
Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense’s Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.
Not to spam the comments but I couldn’t help but recall this Public Service Announcement I’d written after reading a Cryptogon post on this very same subject more than two years ago. And I still feel that the only thing left that will save our culture is if we start to openly heap shame upon the ordinary individual citizens who willingly work on these hateful projects.
We as individual citizens need to develop the moral strength of character to say “No, I do not choose to give my time and energy to something as unconscionable as this. Not even for a paycheck”.
Heck…just as you did, I gave up a lucrative finance career because I came to realize how truly evil our Western banking system is. And my life just keeps getting better and better since I did that!
well, look at the bright side. Plenty of jobs for the Deckards out there …