Robots at War
January 25, 2009 11:16 PM Subscribe

Robots at War: The New Battlefield. "It sounds like science fiction, but it is fact: On the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, robots are killing America’s enemies and saving American lives. But today’s PackBots, Predators, and Ravens are relatively primitive machines. The coming generation of 'war-bots' will be immensely more sophisticated, and their development raises troubling new questions about how and when we wage war." [Via]
posted by homunculus (65 comments total) 10 users marked this as a favorite

Warbot Pinup Calendar
posted by homunculus at 11:21 PM on January 25, 2009

And if we sell enough of them, it will be our warbots fighting their warbots and nobody's wedding or school or hospital gets bombed.... right?
posted by louche mustachio at 11:27 PM on January 25, 2009

Sure, until they get smart enough to figure out how to make US go out and fight for THEM.

Consider yourself warned.
posted by Aquaman at 11:28 PM on January 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

Look out! The reindeer is a secret warbot! It shoots lasers out of its eyes, and then it stomps on you! It's gonna mess you up!
posted by louche mustachio at 11:30 PM on January 25, 2009

We know someone will make an unoriginal and tired Terminator or Sarah Connor reference in this thread, so I just thought I'd jump in and ruin it for them before they do so.
posted by Justinian at 11:31 PM on January 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

INITIATE ROBO-TROCITY! DESTROY TERRORIST HU-MAN CIVILIANS!
posted by Artw at 11:33 PM on January 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

Ellen?!
posted by bicyclefish at 11:34 PM on January 25, 2009 [4 favorites]

Stay tuned for yet another round of risk-free colonialist warfare! Our lives are expensive, their lives are cheap! And remember: "Whatever happens, we have got/The Maxim gun, and they have not."
posted by nasreddin at 11:35 PM on January 25, 2009 [3 favorites]

War is awesome when no-one involved is a real person.
posted by Artw at 11:40 PM on January 25, 2009

If we don't work on war robots, we'll just continue to work on our force multiplication in other ways. Probably better vehicles.

How much really differentiates a very sophisticated computerized vehicle from a robot anyway? Especially a remotely-controlled robot with a human pilot.

Also, I'm not as pessimistic about what robots will do to war. Having more expendable 'soldiers' makes you more likely to go to war, sure, but it also lets you engage in tactics that cause less collateral damage. Imagine if Israel had been able to send robots into Gaza - maybe they could have gotten their targets with less collateral damage, since they would have been able to take more risks on the ground (assuming they wanted to, which is an argument for a different day.)
posted by Mitrovarr at 11:51 PM on January 25, 2009 [1 favorite]

>>We know someone will make an unoriginal and tired Terminator or Sarah Connor reference

Sure, but the logic of ______(Terminator reference)____ is, um, iron-clad.

The tactical advantages of robo systems will eventually outstrip-- or whittle into insignificance-- the strategic imperative of human supervision of those systems.

Moore's Law isn't just describing computational power; it's also describing the odds against maintaining human control over military decision- making.
posted by darth_tedious at 11:55 PM on January 25, 2009

"Come with me if you want to snark"
posted by Artw at 12:06 AM on January 26, 2009 [4 favorites]

>War is awesome when no-one involved is a real person.

The enemy is never a real person. That's why it is ethical to slaughter them.

Accept it or be terminated.
posted by McGuillicuddy at 12:07 AM on January 26, 2009

>ACTIVATE KILBOT
>DESIGNATE USER McGuillicuddy STATUS:TERRORIST UNPERSON
>COMMENSE UNPERSON CLEANUP SWEEP
posted by Artw at 12:13 AM on January 26, 2009

I fear the civil bots too.
posted by Rhomboid at 12:23 AM on January 26, 2009

Clearly Asmov was wrong. He thought that we would come up with the "Three laws of robotics" because we'd be afraid of them. Well, never underestimate people's willingness to jump into anything we can dream up regardless of the risks!
posted by delmoi at 12:45 AM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

@delmoi - Asimov (note spelling) was not wrong.

The phase of robotics we are entering now is what will TEACH people to be afraid of uncontrolled AI, and lead to the laws of robotics.
posted by anser at 1:25 AM on January 26, 2009

robots are killing America’s enemies and saving American lives Gee willikers, it's 1952 by golly
posted by mattoxic at 2:00 AM on January 26, 2009

NPR's Terry Gross on Fresh Air just did a story on this on 22 Jan.
posted by mateuslee at 2:30 AM on January 26, 2009

I would like to use a reference from Heartbeeps instead. Too bad it wasn't funny enough for me to remember any of it.
posted by poppo at 3:53 AM on January 26, 2009

The current massive American military with first gen warbots can't even defeat goat herding tribesmen. We have a ways to go before we need to worry about their combat effectiveness. However, these robots are awesome at their main goal which is securing military funding and stripping America of its natural wealth.
posted by srboisvert at 4:29 AM on January 26, 2009 [4 favorites]

And so man continues to differentiate himself from all other forms of life on earth.

Way to invest in the greater good.
posted by notreally at 4:31 AM on January 26, 2009

Really long article, but surprisingly detailed and non-warmongering coming from a Brookings fellow. It gets closest to (what I think should be) the point towards the end. Robots are just another tool for killing people, so it increases our violent capacity. For those expecting robots to decrease civilian casualties: robots are our preferred method of blowing up weddings.

and srboisvert is dead on (er... I mean correct)
posted by Humanzee at 4:57 AM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

I noticed this morning that my Roomba is set for "Malevolent Sentience". Also, my cat is missing.
posted by orme at 5:18 AM on January 26, 2009 [6 favorites]

Our robots vs. their robots. How is this not an expensive variation on cock fighting?
posted by SteveTheRed at 5:45 AM on January 26, 2009

My father always said "you can lead a robot to water and you can make it drink but you can't do a third thing."
posted by I Foody at 5:47 AM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

I noticed this morning that my Roomba is set for "Malevolent Sentience". Also, my cat is missing.

I believe the term is "route clearence."
posted by geos at 6:19 AM on January 26, 2009

Our robots vs. their robots. How is this not an expensive variation on cock fighting?

I was thinking along these lines too - I mean, in fifty years, when everyone has them, will we wage war entirely with robots in some large, sanctioned, desert-based arena? [NOT MIDDLE-EAST-IST]

And if we accept that, then how long will it be before we realize that all we're really doing is pitting one country's engineering and manufacturing prowess against another's?

Because if we do that, then it won't be long till we figure out everyone's just using the same open-source robot designs and outsourcing the supply chain, logistics and production to Shanghai, so then everything reduces to one country's ability to finance the robot-building versus another's.

Yes, yes, I know, asymmetric warfare, blah blah blah, not just nation-states, etc.
posted by kcds at 6:34 AM on January 26, 2009

Roger Roger
posted by Ironmouth at 6:36 AM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

My loathing for war is in conflict with my abiding love for killer robots.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:45 AM on January 26, 2009 [4 favorites]

When people say "robot," I think of something that is entirely self-directed, not an RC car/plane with a gun strapped on. In my opinion, things like the Predator are not robots. Robots will present entirely new problems, what with target identification etc.
posted by Edgewise at 6:57 AM on January 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

I would implore everyone to take extra care to make sure this article doesn't get uploaded to skynet.
posted by orville sash at 7:00 AM on January 26, 2009

I've often felt that the ultimate form of warbot will take the form of a giant mobile blender with articulated arms that pick up enemy soldiers (or really, just anything nearby), and dumps them into the whirling blades.

It will stride malevolently over the battlefield on huge chicken legs, its psychological domination subroutines shrieking "WILL YOU BLEND?" at 140 dB.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:13 AM on January 26, 2009 [4 favorites]

Our robots vs. their robots. How is this not an expensive variation on cock fighting?

Well, the birds don't hold the land they win, and they don't often kill all the humans nearby.
posted by rokusan at 7:19 AM on January 26, 2009

Every warbot that is made, every autonomous hunter-killer launched, every laser fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of titanium.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 7:22 AM on January 26, 2009 [7 favorites]

Forget robot-on-robot warfare -- let's take it one step further and just run our wars in simulation, resolving our casualties with disintegration booths.
posted by LordSludge at 7:45 AM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

Can I come with you?
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 8:02 AM on January 26, 2009

Quite right: the three laws of robotics applied to robots with a sophisticated intelligence. In all these killbots, the brain is still a human operator.

That said, I'm sure people would develop autonomous killbots if they could.
posted by Krrrlson at 8:33 AM on January 26, 2009

Anyone else ever read "Second Variety" ?
posted by scarello at 8:51 AM on January 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

What could go wrong?
posted by swift at 8:55 AM on January 26, 2009

"The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea.
They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall
mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by
small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is
clear: To build and maintain those robots. Thank you."
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:18 AM on January 26, 2009

I'm really looking forward to the day the US Army forgets to put the minus sign in the longitude box and I have some hydraulic titanium demon spawn busting down my door.
posted by crapmatic at 9:29 AM on January 26, 2009

I'm really looking forward to the day the US Army forgets to put the minus sign in the longitude box and I have some hydraulic titanium demon spawn busting down my door

We're all looking forward to that day, crapmastic.
posted by AdamCSnider at 9:39 AM on January 26, 2009

prior thread: fear the Bum Bot!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQOCK-vGXW8
posted by celerystick at 9:46 AM on January 26, 2009

The end result of the robotic war machine development of course, will be something like this. Maybe if we're lucky, someone will accdentally program in a greater sense of ethics than the human military leadership exhibits.
posted by happyroach at 10:17 AM on January 26, 2009

This is how it will happen. Someone will run the killbot software through an optimizer, which will work out that the basic intent is to kill humans, an it will enhance performance by removing all the conditionals relating to waiting for orders and being selective about which humans to kill.
posted by George_Spiggott at 10:37 AM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

God willing.
posted by It's Raining Florence Henderson at 10:48 AM on January 26, 2009

George_Spiggot - we should sell Metafilter on some security software that works on that principle.
posted by Artw at 11:10 AM on January 26, 2009

The distant future. The year 2000.
posted by YoBananaBoy at 11:13 AM on January 26, 2009 [2 favorites]

This will eventually cause the NRA to change their slogan to, 'Non-robotic guns don't kill people. People and robotic guns kill people." Just doesn't have the same flair.
posted by jamstigator at 11:46 AM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

This talk is by Ralph Osterhout who designed and/or worked on several of the robotics (he also designs toys) being used in Iraq and Afganistan.
posted by nooneyouknow at 2:00 PM on January 26, 2009

I think DARPA and Pixar are collaborating on a project....
posted by Kronos_to_Earth at 4:22 PM on January 26, 2009

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR) have organized a conference called "Technology in Wartime", to "consider the ethical implications of wartime technologies and how these technologies are likely to affect civilization in years to come. Ultimately we want to engage a pressing question of our time: What should socially-responsible computer professionals do in a time of high tech warfare?"

http://technologyinwartime.org/

Archive.org has video of the conference, including a panel called "When Robots Commit War Crimes: Autonomous Weapons and Human Responsibility" (which features roboticist Ron Arkin talking about "Governing Lethal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture"!)

http://www.archive.org/details/When_Robots_Commit_War_Crimes.Autonomous_Weapons_and_Human_Responsibility

I think this is something we're just beginning to deal with as a society.
posted by jjwiseman at 5:08 PM on January 26, 2009

Video: Army's WALL-E Put to the Test
posted by homunculus at 7:53 PM on January 26, 2009 [1 favorite]

STOP IT. YOU'RE HURTING IT.
posted by Rhaomi at 9:27 PM on January 26, 2009

Wow, this is a real step in making war obsolete. If you don't actually kill off your surplus population, what's the point?
posted by happycarl at 10:20 AM on January 27, 2009

In other robot news: ‘Organic’ robots to mimic primitive life
posted by homunculus at 3:42 PM on January 27, 2009

If you don't actually kill off your surplus population, what's the point?

Kill off somebody else's surplus population while boosting your economy via regressive taxation funneled into war industry?

Robot war: it's a win/win!
posted by Kadin2048 at 3:57 PM on January 27, 2009 [1 favorite]

Prepare for the Robot Wars: Six questions for P.W. Singer, author of Wired for War
posted by homunculus at 9:20 AM on January 28, 2009

Machine machinations: Smart robot capable of hunting for its own "food"
posted by homunculus at 9:32 PM on January 29, 2009

The Daily Show: P.W. Singer questions whether the advances in robotics help us in 21st century warfare.
posted by homunculus at 8:48 AM on January 30, 2009

The Robo-Urinal
posted by homunculus at 3:16 PM on February 3, 2009

A Robomedic for the Battlefield: A snakelike robotic arm may one day medically attend to soldiers as they are carried off the battlefield.
posted by homunculus at 12:48 PM on February 4, 2009

Unnatural selection: Robots start to evolve
posted by homunculus at 1:27 PM on February 6, 2009

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