Boffins give military robots a conscience
BACKROOM boffins in the US Army have decided that robots will be better at warfare if they have a built in guilt system.
According to CNET, robotics engineer Ronald Arkin of the Georgia Institute of Technology has just finished a three-year contract with the US Army designing software to create ethical robots. He said his proof of concept software is a decade or two away from being used.
Each robot is embedded with internationally prescribed laws of war and rules of engagement, such as those in the Geneva Conventions.
Arkin has been embeding robotic soldiers with moral "emotion" of guilt. This downgrades the robots' ability to engage targets if it is acting in ways which exceed the predicted battle damage in certain circumstances.
He argues that giving them a guilt trip makes them better at avoiding civilian casualties than human soldiers.
Specifically he has built a component called an "ethical adaptor" by studying the models of guilt that human beings have and embedding those within a robotic system. The robot can eventually refuse to use certain classes of weapons systems if it gets to a point where the predictions it's making are unacceptable by its own standards.
The robots can be programmed with information that allows them to avoid areas where civilians may be, like cemeteries, hospitals and apartment buildings.
Arkin said that robots could be more humane than humans on the battlefield. Of course if they are forced to obey orders we guess they will need some sort of counselling if they accidently burn a baby or two. µ
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I could have done that!
All you do is program
1. Serve the public trust
2. Protect the innocent
3. Uphold the law
4. (Classified)
We're all doom to control by a shadowy cabal of robots.
Bizarrely, this concept was being mooted in the 2000AD comic back in 1978:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammerstein_(robot)
In brief: the Mark I was a psychotic killer, so the US army went back to the board and added a conscience for the Mark II. Unfortunately, this turned the Mark II into a pacifist!
It'd be interesting to see how the real-life concept pans out - and how easy will it be to fake it out - e.g. a little child with a hand-grenade...
Marvin the paranoid android
Since, who writes the code that determines when use of a given weapon causes too much damage?
Like "who watches the watchers", but for the military instead.
The real ethical problem is the use of robots, not the behaviour of robots themselves.
If Bush & co. had had robots then the atrocities in Abu Graib, Gitmo, generally blowing random groups of civilians in Iraq and so on, would never have made the news: nobody would have been there to report them.
"Each robot is embedded with internationally prescribed laws of war and rules of engagement, such as those in the Geneva Conventions."
Not much good for Uncle Sam then, as they do not abide by any rules. That is the whole point in them declaring their interventions/actions, a war. They are though, not alone in such madness.
To imagine that war has laws and rules of engagement is both foolish and naive, for when they are broken they are never mended, are they, to never be broken again.
If those individuals who lobbied for and ordered wars were targeted for immediate expulsion/extinction/executive sanction, there would be no war ever again, in double quick time. And then the budget could be used to build whatever was needed for a Global Peace.
It appears though that Man is not nearly advanced enough to Think so, and that makes him the Stupidest of Animals/Virtual Machinery/Rogue Programs.
Changing the Programmming with AIMedia and Beta IT Controls though, and Purging the Sub Prime Ministerial Bugs from Failed Warring Systems, is a Good First Step in every Novel Educational Program and all it takes is Shared Words.
Man is a Lot Smarter as a Virtually IntelAIgent Machine.
"Artificial Intelligence…. Another Approach?
Are we struggling to make machines more like humans when we should be making humans more like machines….. Intelligent/Intelligence machines. Digitization offers real benefits.
Project the Future….. Change it [when necessary] ……Live it
Building a Utopia……
For humans….
A gift from Mars via Venus....
Very possibly, we are alone in the Universe. What we see is simply what we have been Programmed to see. This makes changing what we see a simple matter of Re-Programming."
I'm surprised to be the first one to mention Isaac Asimov, who developed the Three Laws of Robotics in the course of several short stories dating from the late 1940s to the early 1950s.
This article reminds me of the anime series Android Kikaider.
I saw it a few years back, good stuff. highly recomended.
+++++on Three Laws compliance.
Have they forgotten that the whole reason there are civilian casualties at all is to avoid soldier casualties? Rather than send in a platoon of soldiers to rout the enemy an airstrike is called in. It's why there is a "self-defense" reason for shooting back.
So why would this be an issue with robots? You send in a machine that isn't even alive, and is virtually unkillable. You don't even need it to avoid civilians, because it should go only after the combatants without need to for worrying about self-preservation.
Pinocchio's conscience, lord high keeper of the knowledge of right and wrong, counselor in moments of high temptation, and guide along the straight and narrow path. Arise, Sir Jiminy Cricket.
Repeat
Repeat
Shoot
Until friendlyForces.hit=true
Say("Sorry")
Retarget
Until ammo.count=0
The intelligence of the past, oka instinct, and the intelligence of the future, oka intellect, are artificial intelligences because they originate from the dead - the living dead to be exact. Emanating from the thoughts of idiocy and/or lunacy, their universes are one based on time where the longer you malinger onto an imagination, the more you'll wrangle out of the fester - more of fame, fortune and immortality. Because they lack real timing, relying solely in the fixed timing of the non-living, oka the past or the future, the "chances of singing in tune" for these "lifeforms" are just that, chances, or in the parlance of statisitics, a gamble [which has nothing to do with luck for there is no such thing as luck].
Much like the religious fanatic believing that there is a god, his god to be exact, should God exists is merely but the fanatic's belief/hope coming true. He still has no idea who God really is whilst remembering that the knowledge which lacks its own empowerment, lacks reality/presence. The extrication of life from the non-living, which is all around, be it hardware, software, science, religion, commerce or ideology, collectively surmised as "achievements", might seemed valid but it has no real meaning should another higher reality [which envelopes/sheaths it] exists. Should this knowledge/rambling be true is not the point. How one may proved it through repeatable empowerment/experience is the point.
One's consciousness, which leads to conscience, "resides within" the diaphragm [whaat??!] and is the reason why breathing exercises of all sorts claim validity in performing them regardless of whether they are aware of the reality or not whilst not forgetting that the battery that cannot be recharged, can only redistribute its remaining energy. "Chi/Qi" [or "Prana" in Sanskrit], for example, which the Chinese ["masters"] are quick to claim knowledge & mastery thereof, is merely the right-sided energy and not some mysterious omnipresent life-force. A Manchurian Candidate steeped within his idealogy of democracy, communism, worship-saviourship and more, might be excited and all flushed about his creation/invention but the the result is merely the continuation of his deathly expression. It has no real life. It's just coding and oscillations of sorts. The timing of the dead - time.
Only the truly living has an inherent timing/coefficiecy/"vibration" which varies from moment-to-moment. For example, should the body lacks certain minerals, the taking of supplements or foods might cater for the deficiency but it is the job of the ["living timer" within the] body to accept the required amount and reject the rest. Medical dosage is merely there to prevent supplementing from sliding into poisoning.
The real living life-force [as opposed to the living-dead's thoughts] only operates within the present because only the Supreme Timer can work out the moment-to-moment timing. This infinte possibility/impossibility cannot be imitated nor replicated because nothing happens by chance [for there is no such thing as luck, as the "entrepreneur" who finally nailed the {7392573th} banker who would fund his imagination is quick to point out].
Just by looking at the periodic table alone, even the most stupid of idiotics can see perfection in operation. For the beanos-cum-dandies, the number 4 is humanity whereas the numbers zero to 3 are divinity. 0+1+2+3+4=10 and we have 10 digits to allow those who can/dare-to see to make the connection [which the ancient Romans never did]. As for those who think that their very own 0+1 will digitise all into a modern, exicting, entertaining and pluderously opportunistic utopia, the road along the "right" [and the "left"] merely leads to [self-cum-mutual] destruction. Without exception.
The religious fanatics/nutters might have cast Divinoty into an archaic, ritualistic, mumbo-jumbo hallelujah hymning of a nonsense, but in Reality, the science of the Present is an exact science - like the periodic table and the operation of the body - whereas the science of the past and the future merely leads from the, "near bottom to the near top and then back down to the full bottom and beyond". That which is beyond the bottom is called "hell" or an addiction.
Absoluteness has no fear of offering real knowledge because it is beyond the [realisation of the lower] minds. Its only concern is that having the knowledge but not the realisation/love/benevolent-protection, much like a child given a box of matches, destruction will be the only outcome. The Truth is never a secret because only those who have attained the required maturity can perceive it. In Realtivity, however, that's known as a NDA [because of the, "Oh what a tangled web we weave when we first set out to deceive", factor].
If rules and the laws were obeyed in the first place there probably wouldn't be a war. This concept is crazy, humans are going to be making the rules and laws for a somewhat intelligent robot to go out and wage war, don't be surprised if it concludes that humans are the ultimate problem and then act on that conclusion. Thinking machines..... its a hurdle....
The Star Wars films, when the Jedi's and probably the Sith found out they couldn't influence droids with the force: Except in pushing them making them fly against the walls"
Qui-Gone: "To Corizant!"
Droid: "Er-errr does not compute.. "
They switched to, as in the next film, right... Clones! Something more controllable. But you did see droids among the clones, what a Cyber Circus!