I, for one, do not welcome our new military robot overlords
[ story here... ]
Military robots 'pose a threat to humanity'
By Marlowe Hood in Paris
February 27, 2008 01:43pm
INCREASINGLY autonomous, gun-toting 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 says.
"They pose a threat to humanity," said University of Sheffield
professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address today 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 4000 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-calibre
machine guns deployed to Iraq last year, manufactured by US arms maker
Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said
Prof Sharkey.
But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.