30% of US Army comprised of robotic forces by 2020

What will be the outcome of this?
will the machine become conscious? will it try to wipe out humanity?

Most of the disclosed robotic projects that we as civilians know of, are remote controlled, mostly reconnaissance drones, but the day will come, when the powers that be decide to replace the militia with killing machines, when that happens, what will we say?

Will the "Support our troops" discussions mean anything then?
I'm not so certain that all will be as easy as they think.
those in command will make the choice without second thought, it will be revealed that all the soldiers have always been causalities of war...

When the military says 'robot' they mean everything from self-driving trucks up to what you would conventionally think of as a robot. You would more accurately call them autonomous systems rather than robots,"

"It's a chain of command thing. You don't want to give autonomy to a weapons delivery system. You want to have a human hit the button," says Smart. "You don't want the robot to make the wrong decision. You want to have a human to make all of the important decisions."

"We forget that when we're controlling robots in the lab it's really pretty safe and no one's trying to kill us," says Smart. "But if you are in a war zone and you're hunched over a laptop, that's not a good place to be. You want to be able to use your eyes in one place and use your hand to control the robot without tying up all of your attention."

source


I'm more scared of a unstable person with a gun, than a robot with a gun, all sorts of questions come to mind

What about ethics, what about morale? the machines will have no pity, no remorse...

Wait a minute, some soldiers are like robots, doing what they are told, without questioning its source, never mind then, robot apocalypse, here we come....


[edit on 8-8-2008 by TheOneEyedProphet]

The thing you have to avoid with robots is motion activated sensors. Cause once those are installed on the weapon. Whether you are American or Islamic, it doesn't matter. It will fire at anything that moves.

But for the wiping out humanity, I could tell ya that it won't probably happen. People might have intentions to build robots that can. But I think the very mass majority of the robots will be intending to help people, instead of being mass murders like the military ones that you have here.

Once the robots are just as smart as us, or exceeds our mental capacity. Then you might perhaps say that robots would be then capable to make decisions for themselves, without any guidance. They will understand our human nature and behaviour more clearly. Who knows they might be the teachers for the future generations.

imagine that, the robots we created being the teachers and leaders we needed...

the thing is that the ones developing the technology want to use said technology to kill, and after they have perfected that aspect, they might develop robots that like philanthropic issues...

its been proven before, microwaves, the internets, photographic equipment, cel phones, etc etc., first they kill, then they sell out...
just like the Roomba!