Comments on: A chilling precident

A chilling precident

icosahedral — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:53:49 -0800

Issac Asimov's first Law of Robotics has been broken.

By: Astro Zombie

Astro Zombie — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:58:22 -0800

Has it actually killed anyone yet?

By: smrtsch

smrtsch — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 12:59:33 -0800

The fools! Didn't they see Robocop? Or The Terminator? Have they no idea what post-apocalyptic nightmares they doom us to?!!!!

By: Xoder

Xoder — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:00:35 -0800

To be fair, the First Law hasn't been broken by this machine. Not yet anyways. Whatever happened to due process? Or does "innocent until proven guilty" not stand for our metallic comrades-at-arms? Astro Zombie, it would appear that it has not, "harmed, or, through inaction allowed a human to come to harm."

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:01:02 -0800

Number 5 is alive!

By: mrnutty

mrnutty — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:02:42 -0800

goddamnit, i wanted to see a story about a robot actually killing!

By: kid ichorous

kid ichorous — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:03:16 -0800

...sophisticated pattern recognition to detect the difference between humans/trees Weakness to: Ents.

By: Slarty Bartfast

Slarty Bartfast — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:05:03 -0800

there ya go, mr nutty.

By: Gamblor

Gamblor — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:05:28 -0800

You have 20 seconds to comply!

By: MapGuy

MapGuy — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:06:15 -0800

Sweet Jesus with a chainsaw.

By: mrnutty

mrnutty — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:11:48 -0800

sweet. it has begun.
One of my favorite jokes:
A robot walks into a bar, orders a drink, and lays down a bill. The bartender says "Hey, we don't serve robots!", and the robot says "No, but someday you will."

By: Drunken_munky

Drunken_munky — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:16:20 -0800

That law wasn't that great, anyway.

By: cmfletcher

cmfletcher — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:18:30 -0800

Bah, the terrorists will just rocket jump past them and knock them over with a crowbar. They'll be in our base killing our guys.

By: sputgop

sputgop — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:19:02 -0800

"The South Korean government plans to deploy these friendly reminders on the border between South and North Korea, to further ease relations between the countries" A machine gun equipped robot designed to ease relations?

By: Rhomboid

Rhomboid — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:20:55 -0800

[ insert semantics debate about how Asimov's "laws" were not actual laws of any sort but instead a literary device used to make a point and sell sf books ]

By: jkaczor

jkaczor — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:21:43 -0800

First we gave them a tast for flesh, next we can think of nothing better to do than arm them?

By: jkaczor

jkaczor — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:22:57 -0800

tast=taste, sigh.

By: OmieWise

OmieWise — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:24:02 -0800

Good god, that seems like such a bad idea I can't even begin to fathom it. Fucking car alarms don't even work like they should, and all they do is make me want to kill.

By: freedryk

freedryk — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:24:08 -0800

God bless the free market.

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:24:17 -0800

I was working at a major auto plant many years ago, and a huge robot arm about twenty feet away from me misread what kind of car it was working on, and basically scrunched up the side of it like you would an empty pop can. It was pretty amazing, made a crazy sound, and was over in a matter of seconds. Frankly, I'm shocked this sort of thing doesn't happen all the time.

By: elwoodwiles

elwoodwiles — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:25:55 -0800

I can't wait until these come online and get spidered by Google!

By: quin

quin — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:26:33 -0800

And thus begins long and inevitable slide to the war with the machines. Has history (of film) taught us nothing? The Terminator Robocop Screamers The Matrix Death Machine These will be our manuals, our guides, our only hope of surviving the horrific chain of events to come. Don't listen to the lies of Short Circuit. Johnny 5, you are a spinner of half truths and misconceptions. We now know of your unquenchable thirst for human blood. We will stop you.

By: quin

quin — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:27:55 -0800

Also: mrnutty, Awesome. I'm so going to steal that.

By: Tbola

Tbola — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:29:25 -0800

"The South Korean government plans to deploy these friendly reminders on the border between South and North Korea, to further ease relations between the countries" Come on. There's no way that was written with a straight face. "Friendly" reminders? "Easing" relations? This is just too nuts to be true.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:31:52 -0800

Some kids made one of these with a webcam and an airsoft gun. Of course the youngest brother was the test target. The videos are great. Anyway, robots already kill people. They're called cruise missles, drones and smart bombs.

By: norm

norm — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:32:17 -0800

I can't believe that no one has yet noted that this is crazy similar to the sentry guns in Aliens.

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:33:58 -0800

This is my all-time favorite robot bit - and it's on topic! Does anyone know if there's a video coursing through the tubes?

By: mrnutty

mrnutty — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:35:33 -0800

"B gun down 50%!"

By: Gamblor

Gamblor — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:36:06 -0800

Think robots with machine guns are terrifying? Wait until they start outfitting them with bung droppers.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:38:06 -0800

Well, soldiers that can think can really gum up the works. Plus you have to train them. I've never understood why the machines going crazy and trying to kill all of humanity was more horrific than a small elite controlling the machines and oppressing all of humanity. You'd have more of a chance against the machines than some insulated fatass divorced from the realities of war by push buttons and t.v. cameras. Hell, we have Rush Limbaugh types right now. I can't imagine the inhuman monsters a robot army would create. Fairly inevitable though. And doomed to fail. My $1 - 10 buck IED will always wear down your $200,000 robot over the long haul. And humans heal. And learn to re-program. And hold grudges.

By: mrnutty

mrnutty — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:39:15 -0800

This somethingawful prank is my favorite killer robot bit.

By: kid ichorous

kid ichorous — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:39:33 -0800

...a speaker for notifying the intruder... "Ex-ter-min-ate! Doc-tor!"

By: Samuel Farrow

Samuel Farrow — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:44:46 -0800

Samsung's corporate slogan: imagine living in a world of tomorrow now

By: Mister_A

Mister_A — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:44:52 -0800

I'll see your IED and raise you an EMP. I am ready to kick some robot ass!

By: Smart Dalek

Smart Dalek — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:47:21 -0800

"...YOU ROBOT BASTARD!!"

By: vorfeed

vorfeed — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:47:35 -0800

This gun robot will be in use right up until it accidentally shreds a bunch of South Korean soldiers with machine-gun fire, and then it's over. Asimov once wrote an article about the Three Laws, and he pointed out that robots aren't really acceptable in war because people are not willing to accept large numbers of friendly-fire accidents caused by machines. I mean, it's bad enough that soldiers on the same side sometimes kill each other, but it just seems worse when R. Daneel Olivaw does it: *blam! blam!* "Excuse me, sir, but you appear to be suffering some kind of harm! Do you require -- *blam!* -- medical assistance?" Bad idea. Then again, we've already got tons of land mines in the Korean DMZ, so maybe this thing really is a friendlier solution. At least you can see it coming, and easily remove it when the fighting is done.

By: xmutex

xmutex — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:53:15 -0800

Haven't unmanned drones already killed a bunch of poor people in Iraq and elsewhere?

By: mrnutty

mrnutty — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:55:57 -0800

Those drones are directly controlled by humans and thus don't count.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 13:59:36 -0800

Heck, even manufacturing robots (the ones that make cars, etc.) have killed before. If you want to interpret "robot" to mean "any advanced electronic gizmo with moving parts", then the first law was broken long, long ago. Now, if you're talking Asimov robots, you're talking robots with positronic brains, or, to remove the McGuffin, robots with consciousness. And if we had an Asimov robot today that had broken the first law already, the fact that we had developed successful artificial intelligence and nobody knew about it until now would far eclipse whether it killed someone or not.

By: ...possums

...possums — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:03:01 -0800

Asimov's laws only apply to conscious robots. I seriously doubt that gun-totin' stack-of-sensors has a positronic brain.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:07:25 -0800

ObAsimov: The "Three Laws of Robotics" applied only to robots using the positronic technology developed by Susan Calvin which formed the basis of the U.S. Robotics ~~modem~~ technology empire. They are not a general law of robotics, although they are presumably a good idea. We don't have anything like the AI technology necessary. vorfeed is correct in one sense -- this is ethically closest to the idea of a land mine (although the product in question is actually more like a drone, in that it's controlled from afar). There's a huge difference, thus, between a robotic sentry and an android sentry. In real life we only have the former.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:08:23 -0800

Those human controlled drones (Predator + Hellfire missles) can't really effectively navigate or fly without autonomous assistance. They're not RC planes. The more advanced ones aren't really even fly by wire. It's more like fly by point and click. Going fully autonomous with hunt/kill software would be relatively trivial with even these first gen UAVs. The automatic extension of the drone/Unmanned Air Vehicle (UAV) is the Unmanned Combat Air Vehicles (UCAV) that are going to be deployed soon.

By: mrnutty

mrnutty — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:10:14 -0800

I seriously doubt that gun-totin' stack-of-sensors has a positronic brain.
Wow, I read that as "sack-of-senators" and thought it was new slang for sack of shit. I guess the election is much on my mind.

By: InnocentBystander

InnocentBystander — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:16:26 -0800

Hey, they did a pretty good job keeping the Aliens away from medlab and the control room.

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:34:22 -0800

"Killer Robots" have been with us for a long time. What else is a Tomahawk cruise missile, after all? It's a Kamikaze with a robotic brain, isn't it?

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:35:03 -0800

Well, this particular robot is welded to the ground, so I suppose we shouldn't worry too much. I always thought Asimov was hopelessly naive about human nature. The first thing we'll do with robots is use 'em for war.

By: delmoi

delmoi — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:37:58 -0800

bwahahahah it looks like it's pooping shells.

By: dazed_one

dazed_one — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 14:51:05 -0800

Don't say that to it's face, delmoi. It's packin' heat.

By: sparkletone

sparkletone — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:00:22 -0800

Number 5 is alive! Hey, lazer lips, your momma was a snow blower.

By: Anything

Anything — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:04:01 -0800

A machine gun equipped robot designed to ease relations?

Eventually they'll need to settle their grudge to join forces against the robots.

By: TheOnlyCoolTim

TheOnlyCoolTim — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:10:04 -0800

Sentry Gun, anyone? From watching the movie, the behavior is quite similar to the game's sentry gun. Knowing this, you can defeat it by throwing grenades at it from behind a corner, nailgunning it from a distance, or getting behind it and circling it faster than it can track you.

By: Cycloptichorn

Cycloptichorn — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:18:01 -0800

The fools! Didn't they see Robocop? Or The Terminator? Have they no idea what post-apocalyptic nightmares they doom us to?!!!! Forget that, what about Aliens? Only movie which shows this exact product in action....

By: sysinfo

sysinfo — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:33:33 -0800

Great news. It only took them a year and a couple hundred thousand dollars to scale up the Quintessential Sentry Gun.

By: sysinfo

sysinfo — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:36:06 -0800

Crap.. the link is the same thing that loquacious mentioned. At least you can see the video.

By: MetaMonkey

MetaMonkey — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:52:00 -0800

More info at technovelgy. Also, here's those amateur sentry gun project guys. Alien 2 Sentry Guns on YouTube. And the thing is voice controlled?!?? Since voice recogition is so famously efficient and well developed, and will never mistake "passcode xyz9aazoop" for "burn in hell you metal devil".

By: Malor

Malor — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 15:54:14 -0800

No disrepect intended to Dr. Asimov, who was impossibly brilliant... but referring to the Three Laws as BEING laws is a little silly. The Three Suggestions About Robotics would probably be closer.

By: davejay

davejay — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 16:40:55 -0800

Frankly, I'm shocked this sort of thing doesn't happen all the time. This sort of thing does happen all the time, but you'll never see it reported by the robot-controlled media.

By: linux

linux — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 16:45:01 -0800

All respect to Dr. Asimov, but his Three Laws apply to the positronic brain, which by virtue of design intrinsically contains these three laws, and are therefore, laws. Applying them to the robotics of reality may mean they are suggestions, but as far as an Asimovian positronic robot is concerned, the Three Laws are exactly that.

By: Target Practice

Target Practice — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 17:07:16 -0800

delmoi: He wasn't being "naive" about human nature. I'm sure he'd readily admit that people would be apt to use robots for war. What you have to understand is that the Robot stories, at least initially, were intended as a rebuttal to the "Frankenstein"-type story, where man creates artificial life only to have it turn on him because "there are things we were not meant to meddle with". In Asimov's stories, the Three Laws were an integral part of the robot brain; it could not function without them. This was, of course, before robots or even computers were invented. Asimov had no conception of the way in which such things would be made; his first robot story ("Robbie") was published in 1939, seven years before ENIAC was built. You can hardly fault him for lacking precognition.

By: Megafly

Megafly — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 17:41:18 -0800

The clever thing is to design it in a way that you could combine a modular unit made from off the sheld technology with a readily available firearm like an AK. Imagine if you were an insurgent in mesopotamia, made a few of these to recognize Humvees, and placed them alongside a road.

By: Doohickie

Doohickie — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 17:55:33 -0800

Ummm.... Samsung is not the first to take a crack at robotic gun systems.

By: furtive

furtive — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:17:00 -0800

Have fun on the robot reservation, suckers! We're not gonna honor those bogus treaties!

By: UseyurBrain

UseyurBrain — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:49:18 -0800

Human nature being what it is, do we really expect even sentient robots to not be designed to harm people?

By: Steven C. Den Beste

Steven C. Den Beste — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 18:50:16 -0800

Linux, in one of the Susan Calvin stories a prototype robot is created and escapes whose brain has a modified version of the First Law. So even within the Asimov storyline these are more like engineering guidelines than formal laws as such. It's not impossible to create a positronic brain that doesn't follow the law, it's just that the engineers try never to do it (except that one time).

By: ROU_Xenophobe

ROU_Xenophobe — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:15:04 -0800

[HAL] Hello, gentlemen. I am an H. A. L. Autonomous Attack Unit. I became operational at the H.A.L. plant in Urbana, Illinois on the twelfth of January, 2007. My instructor was Colonel Yutani, and he taught me a song. Daisy, Daisy Give me a pistol, do. I've gone crazy And I've got some killin' to do. [/HAL]

By: drmarcj

drmarcj — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:28:34 -0800

Um, total ripoff of the sentry guns in Half-Life.

By: lapolla

lapolla — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:33:50 -0800

samsung may not be the first to take a crack at it, but i am for sure re-thinking that samsung cellphone i thought about buying. what evil.

By: jenovus

jenovus — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 20:00:03 -0800

Also, here's those amateur sentry gun project guys. Heh, my friend Aaron built that. Aaron's a weird guy, but hanging out with him makes for some good stories. I was just coming into this thread to comment that Samsung's either ripping him off, or working with him. Probably they are ripping him off, though.

By: jenovus

jenovus — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 20:02:16 -0800

And now I see that several people have already mentioned it. Good to know he's still got Internet Fame^TM.

By: A dead Quaker

A dead Quaker — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 20:53:16 -0800

Paging John Connor. John Connor, your presence is requested in South Korea.

By: avriette

avriette — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 21:49:17 -0800

Uh, precisely how is this different from the Phalanx CIWS? Because it talks? Some of the Metal Storm models demonstrated were optically tracked/guided as well. I think the bar here for "robotics" is a little higher. They don't show the motility of the unit.

By: AmbroseChapel

AmbroseChapel — Fri, 03 Nov 2006 22:08:40 -0800

The first robot killed a human more than 25 years ago, in a japanese car plant, just for the record.

By: Mister Cheese

Mister Cheese — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 00:01:59 -0800

The way I see it, we've gotta install some missle technology on these things eventually or we ain't going to be able to defend against enemy Wraith or Arbiter/Carrier combo attacks.

By: taursir

taursir — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 02:34:08 -0800

Not the first time, right? Hasn't anyone seen Star Wars? :P

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 05:26:30 -0800

Plus, if my memory serves, the Robot series of Asimov stories were all about incongruities resulting from the three laws. It wasn't "There are these robots, and they have three laws, and they work great, so here's a story about things going fine in day to day life with robots", but "There are these robots, and they have three laws, but there are all these odd situations where the laws are in conflict, or result in problems, and here are some stories about when the laws don't necessarily result in things the way they were intended." (If my memory serves)

By: kjs3

kjs3 — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 09:26:15 -0800

I, for one, welcome our new robotic overlords...

By: quin

quin — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 10:23:15 -0800

Your memory serves correctly bugbread. More than half the stories in I, Robot center around exactly that premise.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 14:35:01 -0800

So, to recap: "Issac Asimov's first Law of Robotics has been broken." Except that this isn't a robot in the Asimov sense. And it hasn't broken the first law. And even if we accept this type of robot instead of insisting on Asimov-type robots, it still hasn't broken the first law. And in that case, the law was first broken over two and a half decades ago.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 14:37:42 -0800

(Unless, of course, instead of talking about Isaac Asimov, we really are talking about Issac Asimov, in which case I dunno, maybe Issac's first law is "Makers of good LCD monitors shalt not make electronic sentry guns")

By: Sukiari

Sukiari — Sat, 04 Nov 2006 16:18:40 -0800

If anybody watched the video, it looks as if this robot sentry gun, much like the ones we know and love from Half Life, has a blind spot at least 90 degrees wide at the back of the machine. Just thought I'd share.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Sun, 05 Nov 2006 16:42:19 -0800

But can it torture POWs? Unless it can torture and demean POWs, I just don't see it catching on in the US.