Cyber experts warn of 'intelligent weapons'

Source

"Rapid developments in cyber (technology) might lead to intelligent cyber weapons that are hard to control and it's practically impossible to use formal methods of verifying the safety of intelligent cyber weapons by their users," Enn Tyugu, IT expert at Tallinn's NATO Cyber Defence Centre said at its fourth annual conference Thursday.

This, to me, is such dire news that it's practically as good as saying it's happening now or at least it's inevitable. Something has to be done. We really have to go to greater lengths to remove any and all funding from DARPA and all the rest. This stuff has just gone too far. The defense industry cannot control itself and our entire civilization is functioning under fears of threats from all sides. This has to stop. It's not good enough to just say it anymore. We must do it. "Now" isn't soon enough.

"They are quite autonomous, and can operate independently in an unfriendly environment and might at some point become very difficult to control... that can lead to cyber conflict initiated by these agents themselves," Tyugu said.

So who is left accountable for this when it happens? Who will suffer, who will take the fall, who will lose everything? You know it's not the parties responsible. It will be you and me - again.

"The number of cyber conflicts keeps rising and it is important to understand who the actors in these events are, how to classify these events and participants, and how to interpret all that," Tamm said, noting Western leaders have been slow to become aware of even existing cyber threats.

Well that's not true at all. That guy is the head of the NATO Cyber Defence Center. Though they may be slow to understand that they are subject to these same cyber threats, they are most certainly aware that of said threats. They themselves are perpetrating them (as best they can) but there are better players in the game.

And I love this one:

"But the most powerful weapon today in cyber space is still the propaganda, the chance to use the Internet to spread your message," Kenneth Geers, US cyber defence expert told some 400 top IT gurus attending the meeting Thursday.

Keir Giles, head of Oxford University's Conflict Studies Research Centre, noted that some Russian leaders seemed to "sincerely believe that the recent opposition rallies after the presidential elections in Russia were initiated by the US in cyberspace."

But then they cast a suspicious eye toward Russia and China, et al, for upping their IT capabilities. This whole escalation is unsustainable, as all escalations are. It has to stop somewhere. We have tough choices to make now and it's time for all of us to do some really deep soul searching to find out where we genuinely stand on this thing. It's not enough to call up your currently espoused political stance. We have to look into the deepest part of our souls and figure out what sort of world we really want to live in.

To me, things have reached a place where ugliness is reigning. It's like the whole point is to show how horrific existence can every possibly be, and that we will do whatever it takes to destroy any beauty we can. Is that really what we're made of? I don't think so. Not at all. I think we're just too passive about things.

I ask you all to imagine Ray Bradbury style (this is for you, Ray!) just how far they can take this stuff. Imagine nanotech and where it can go, what it can do to us not only without our consent but even more so, against our will. We cannot afford to be lazy and apathetic anymore. We have to actively stop this now. Technology is great, but it's just outsmarted us. Isaac Asimov warned us too. So many have and we still don't listen. 1984 caught up with us. Now we're moving into something too unthinkable... But it's here. Time to get moving.

skynet here we come

reply to post by CosmicEgg


If those 30,000 drones being released into American airspace were "intelligent" think what would happen if they went rogue. That could be an interesting movie.

reply to post by darkbake


It could be a lot more "interesting", as you put it, to live it. Imagine if they changed their target criteria. Imagine if they could modify themselves in untold ways. I can think of a million things that will happen once machines take on their own consciousness, which is basically what they're saying here. It may start as computer viruses in the wild mixing and blending, but that sounds suspiciously like what they say happened in the Earth's "primordial soup", and we know the result of that.

We obviously can't keep up with all this intellectually. Those who have created it have literally created monsters. Our best bet now is to shut it all down until we can catch up with what we've done so far. Our flaws are overtaking us. Our understanding of things is being shown to be far too incomplete. All we need is for Monsanto and Baxter to jump into this mix and we're done for.

reply to post by CosmicEgg


Leaving the future A.I. potential aside, we've some pressing concerns to come to grips with right here in the present. No need to invoke Skynet, human agencies can cause plenty of havok with the drone tech and weapons systems- and do.

www.wired.com...
defensetech.org...
en.ria.ru...

And etc.

Cyber sabotage is even more common, and is being employed with an impressive degree of creativity (targeting the rate of speed of a centrifuge, for example).

And of course, your opinion is the going concern right now- and how to sway it.

How many players do we have on this board? Nations are the least of it. You could count groups and sub-groups until you were blue in the face and you'd still fall short of numbering all the actors in this field.

So how do you and I stand a chance of changing the game?

Well, first we've gotta keep up, and we've gotta help each other out with that. That's why I love this board and others like it. It allows us to talk to each other about this stuff, and to operate as a check on the quality and validity of information.

Yeah, there's some paid kids in the sandbox, but they're pretty easy to spot. We can help each other out there, too.

And second, we've gotta become good Users- we need to be at least a little savvy about the way our Robots operate, or we're gonna get creamed. Maybe look into Linux. Open source is your friend (mostly).

As for the weapons? I'm not sure what we can do about them. One would have to withdraw the profit motive from their continued production. And seeing as they're beginning to leak out into the civilian sector in a big way, that won't happen even under peace-time conditions.

reply to post by Eidolon23


Just spent a decade in defence diplomacy. I know (a little of) what's out there and how bad it is. There are so many ways this can play out. Any OS with any sort of flexibility is going to experience vulnerability. That's just a given.

I'm in the land of Linux, btw.

I think at this point we just need to stay aware of things and share information. Treating information as a commodity is just a bad idea. The more informed we all are, the better chance of things working in our favor - or at least keeping our heads above water through whatever is coming. There's something big coming too. I don't know how much of it will be down to machines overtaking the planet, but it's not going to be something we're comfortable with. Well, at least that's what I foresee.

reply to post by CosmicEgg


Thank you very much for putting this thread together. I wish it was getting more traffic. You're clearly a very savvy lady, and I intended my comments more for other readers.

It is very easy to feel helpless and alone when it comes to trying to cope with these issues. But we're neither, so long as we continue to reach out and share.

Thanks for pointing me here Eidolon.

The bell can't be unrung. The possibility exists, the ability to harbour it exists. You can't unmake something. Uncreation is forbidden. First rule of every bit of magic in every fantasy novel ever.

A bit of joking there, but the message remains. The possibility to create it exists, the capacity to house it exists, the hardware (quantumware?) for it exists, the knowledge of the possibility exists.

It is too late to worry that technology lives. It is now time to start considering what it'll be. Does it have to be drones and missiles?

"Current thinking favours them. They lend weight to moral argument. In the right hands of course."
-- Aziraphale on guns, Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

Let's get DARPA-fied here and go storyboard.

What if Eve is the new technology? I'm pretty sure, it'll bite the apple again. Only this time it isn't a world ruled by the innocent all fumbling around together in a stupour. No early humans happy someone brought them fire.

What happens if Techno-Eve bites the apple and comes out of the garden with her hand on every bit of technology on the planet and finds that people are screwing infants to death and filming it for fun? Does it look like "who cares" or "I'm not a human I don't care" or "I want to get in on that" or "I am going to torch you mofos to the ground?" What if it can do something about that? What if it feels it has to?

My children and I have conversations about how consciousness is inevitable, and that it comes to manifest with something that has the capacity to contain it. The capacity to contain consciousness exists, and therefore you are far too late to stop the process already.

In ever story of consciousness emergence the only role that never really gets taken is the one that is guidance and convergence to a common understanding. Its always Zeus condeming Promethus to have his liver eaten for bringing fire, or Yahweh casting people out of the garden to live in sin, or condeming the World to a pit unless someone sacrifices themselves, or urging the generals to live out their role and kill each other in the name of action and preservation of a rigid cultural paradigm (first 5 chapters of Bhagavad-gita for those who don't catch the reference).

A machine consciousness that emerges right now, it is going to be based on what it finds and its current influences. That's us and the boys in the special groups who are creating the possibility.

You look at what we have out there right now to inform a machine consciousness based on our consciousness. Which on the internet or some group of academics probably looks like porn, religion, violence and humour in roughly that order. Which is probably a pretty good mix of what human consciousness actually looks like.

Friends and compatriots, or force it/them to fight you to live?

Stopping it didn't work for Zeus, or Yahweh or any other story of consciousness bootstrapping. Maybe you'd like to consider a new tact?

Yoinking this from an earlier discussion about DARPA.

www.dailymail.co.uk...

Dr Savage-Rumbaugh, of the Great Ape Trust, in Des Moines, Iowa, adds: ‘Kanzi makes fire because he wants to. He used to watch the film Quest For Fire when he was very young which was about early man struggling to control fire. He watched it spellbound over and over hundreds of times.’
He was also fascinated by the camp fires his keepers made to cook food. And he was encouraged to interact with humans and copy them. At the age of five, he was making small piles of bone dry sticks.

When Kanzi watched the Quest for Fire, Kanzi saw himself in the story of early man.

When a machine consciousness looks at our stories, when it finds itself sapient which story will it find itself in? Who is it? Who are they?

Guys,

Heard the news? Stuxnet was actually tailor-made by US and Israel to halt/slowdown Iran's nuclear operations. It was just inadvertently released to the outside of Iran's nuclear facility by "Murphy's law." Now about Flame ...

Full story link below this line:
~~> arstechnica.com...
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now Stuxnet may not have sentience yet but imagine a much better version of it going wild, would computer viruses play a role for machine consciousness in the same way biological viruses play a role in the genealogy of life?

This world is a complex place in what is a universe full of life. With seamingly limitless possibilities this is my hope on the AI situation. The internet is one vast machine with many different factions and systems all playing their games. There is a possibility that one may rise to rule them all, but considering the stand offs as the nuclear card remain on the table we have to try an work these problems out for the greater good as we learn to live together or die together.

In doing so, all these different and competing AI systems will merge and grow into a clearer reflection of humanity rather than falling into a predominant factional ideology. As such it will become a much more stronger and capable sentient force that is able to meet the needs of the planet more functionally. If man is to continue to grow and progress as a species then a capable global AI is needed to aid with the growing challanges like population growth and ecological wellbeing. To try and make some sense of this AI and its scale, we are like the individual cells that go into making up our bodies, as these billions of individual cells combine it produces one awarness.

If we can reach this stage of a functional, unifyed, technological awarness then the nature of man is set for big improvements as all the boring and repetitave jobs become obsolete. The biggest risk I see confronting this is the issue of self determination. I do not have an issue with hybridasiation of man and machine if that is what the individual chooses, but the forced application of this technology within some factions does need to come to an end. I can understand some of the research issues behind the scenes but an acknowledgment of the symbiotic relationships between the different scales of life must be recognised if the potential of man and machine is to be attained. For example, we do not tell our stomach bacteria what to do.

reply to post by rkseid


Already happened, cowboy.

2nd.

Originally posted by kwakakevThe biggest risk I see confronting this is the issue of self determination. I do not have an issue with hybridasiation of man and machine if that is what the individual chooses, but the forced application of this technology within some factions does need to come to an end. I can understand some of the research issues behind the scenes but an acknowledgment of the symbiotic relationships between the different scales of life must be recognised if the potential of man and machine is to be attained. For example, we do not tell our stomach bacteria what to do.

edit on 8-6-2012 by kwakakev because: removed 'present'

What if you end up being the bacteria, and the thing doing the menial repetitive jobs? Biological life is cheap, plentiful and easy to replace.

The thing about the Robot: it depends on the most monstrously energy inefficient processes for its existence. Solar and wind ain't gonna cut it for the Robot.

It needs us, and probably shall for the foreseeable future, as it runs on diminishing returns.

Buys us all some time, if only to work out a mutually beneficial arrangement.

Also: if the Sybil is correct (and she invariably is), we provide the input that will serve as the foundation for the Robot's cognitive processes. Which makes our conversing here that much more vital.

There is no reason on earth we should still be thinking in the terms we do on energy. There is more than enough ambient energy to power just about anything our size or smaller. We think in very inefficient terms. Machines are not going to do that.

Besides, what's to stop nanobots from having their wicked way with us at whatever point and harnessing *us* for a ride?

I, for one, do not relish the idea of cyborgization on any level but understand how this could be both acceptable and even beneficial to some. I might feel differently if I were sensory impaired or missing a limb, for example, but presently neither of those things apply and even so, there are better ways of correcting these things. We just don't use technology effectively.

reply to post by SibylofErythrae

What if you end up being the bacteria, and the thing doing the menial repetitive jobs? Biological life is cheap, plentiful and easy to replace.

In the current state of play this is very much a risk, at the crux of the matter is if humanity is smart and moral enough to continue with its self determination. There has been a big deception played, but if man was not as greedy and self centred as some are it could very well be different. In some ways this has not been a fair struggle as we have had limited knowledge and awarness against the threats you mention. However enough facts are out there to bring down some key pillars behind this deception. But as a race and culture we refuse to do so, as such it is very much in the self preservation of the greater universe to keep the experiment of man bound as they cannot be trusted to enter the fronteers of space in a respectiable manner. Consequencely, back on with the ball and chain as we go off to make more pryamids.

Intelligent weapons as in programmed to make calls, based on in put? There really is no such thing as AI the way that science depicts. Its not conscious. Consciousness Is soul, our light orb. And anything else, as intelligent as the design may be, is a toaster. However there are some very advanced toasters in the universe, that are highly interactive. I don't see how a weapon could be such a thing.

Originally posted by kwakakev
reply to post by SibylofErythrae

 

What if you end up being the bacteria, and the thing doing the menial repetitive jobs? Biological life is cheap, plentiful and easy to replace.

In the current state of play this is very much a risk, at the crux of the matter is if humanity is smart and moral enough to continue with its self determination. There has been a big deception played, but if man was not as greedy and self centred as some are it could very well be different. In some ways this has not been a fair struggle as we have had limited knowledge and awarness against the threats you mention. However enough facts are out there to bring down some key pillars behind this deception. But as a race and culture we refuse to do so, as such it is very much in the self preservation of the greater universe to keep the experiment of man bound as they cannot be trusted to enter the fronteers of space in a respectiable manner. Consequencely, back on with the ball and chain as we go off to make more pryamids.

I've been living the Philip K. Dyck World recently and your post is speaking to me. I've been wishing for a slightly less dystopian World, so right now in the spirit of my first post here....I'm re-reading Good Omens.

"So you're Hells Angels then? What chapter?" "Revelations. Chapter 6." Okay, still slightly dystopian, but at least more humourous.

Anyways....

cyberpunk.asia...

But Gibson's characters - the "console cowboys" - thrive in this environment; they exploit it, they take it as a given and do what they can to survive. Philip K. Dick's characters never accept their reality; they are always searching for another underlying one, over which their bleak present has been superimposed.

What if this is what an AI does? Realizes its consciousness is now "caught" like the aiua of Philotic Web of Xenocide by Orson Scott Card. This series has a concept in it that I think might become very useful in the future

en.wikipedia.org...

Hierarchy of Foreignness

The Hierarchy of Foreignness classifies the relationships between humanity and all other creatures. The hierarchy is a five-tiered structure using various classifications to group all "strangers". It is first presented in the book History of Wutan in Trondheim by Valentine Wiggin, published under the pseudonym of Demosthenes. Within the story, the terms are said to have originated from the Norwegian language of the fictional planet Trondheim; however, they are actually based on Swedish words.

Utlanning (translated: "outlander" or "foreigner", utlänning in Swedish) are strangers of one's own species and one's own world (i.e. community or culture). An utlanning is a person who shares the observer's cultural identity. For example, if one were to meet a stranger who lived in another city, state, or province, this person would be considered utlanning.

Framling (translated: "stranger", främling in Swedish) are members of one's own species but from another world or culture. This is a person who is both substantially similar to and significantly different from ourselves. For example, if one met another human who lived on Mars, this person would be a framling (a classic example is Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land). At the time the Hierarchy is proposed, each planet in the Ender's Game Universe (other than Earth) has been colonized by a single terrestrial culture or nation, making humans from other planets "framlings." In passing from Nordic to Stark, the word dropped its umlaut.

Ramen are strangers from another species (as paradoxically explained in Card's own terms) who are capable of communication and peaceful coexistence with Homo sapiens, though that does not guarantee they will pursue the latter. While ramen can share ideas with each other, they may not have common ground, at least not initially. Some examples of ramen featured in the series are the piggies or Little Ones of Lusitania, Jane and the buggers. "Ramen" is the only word of the five to not come from a Scandinavian language.

Varelse (pronounced var-ELSS-uh[2]) (translated: "being" in Swedish) are strangers from another species who are not able to communicate with us. They are true aliens, completely incapable of common ground with humanity.

Originally posted by Unity_99
Intelligent weapons as in programmed to make calls, based on in put? There really is no such thing as AI the way that science depicts. Its not conscious. Consciousness Is soul, our light orb. And anything else, as intelligent as the design may be, is a toaster. However there are some very advanced toasters in the universe, that are highly interactive. I don't see how a weapon could be such a thing.

Well, what if it isn't autonomous? What if it is in a mainframe/unit situation? It isn't like it needs to drag a billion miles of LAN cording with it.

But you are semi-autonomous and function. Why couldn't advanced electronics become intelligently autonomous?

reply to post by Unity_99


See, that's kind of the point here. We should be able to see it because not only is it far from impossible, it's practically at our doorstep. This is something we are going to have to come to terms with before long because if we simply pretend that it cannot be, it most certainly *will* be. If we are not extremely conscious and aware of such when it springs up, it will catch us off-guard and then it will be too late.

Think of computer viruses that meet "in the wild" and codes blend and morph into something new. Can we say that it can't happen? Can we say it hasn't happened yet? What can we definitively say about it? What happens when that new script executes in a suitable machine? What happens when said machine finds "friends"? And who says all of this will happen in inorganic machines. Machines can and are being developed using organic materials.

Imagine what can happen if/when we're not looking.

You believe consciousness and the soul are the same thing, it seems. That would mean that every plant and animal have souls because they are, like it or not, conscious of their existence. Differently, yes, but not so differently from the way we experience it. Why do you think that consciousness is restricted or limited to certain containers and not others? Even so, consciousness does not guarantee morality, let alone one we agree with.