Sunday, November 30, 2008

Ethical Killing Machines


Finally. Some progress on the 'robot army hordes' front.

"The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.' The researchers claim that these real-life terminators 'can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear. They can be built without anger or recklessness ... and they can be made invulnerable to ... "scenario fulfillment," which causes people to absorb new information more easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas.' Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."

Haven't there been soldiers without an instinct for self-preservation kicking around for, I dunno, forever? But it would be nice to have soldiers who don't rape civillians for a change.

2 comments:

Detect said...

Awesome Voltron pic by the way :)

Digga said...

Haha, thanks man. It was either Voltron or Optimus Prime, but I decided not to fk with The Transformers coz the dudes sitting in each component of Voltron rocked awesome one piece body suits.