The Pentagon's 'Terminator Conundrum': Robots That Could Kill on Their Own

["Dave Farber" <farber () gmail com>]

Begin forwarded message:

> From: Hendricks Dewayne <dewayne () warpspeed com>
> Date: October 25, 2016 at 11:41:24 AM EDT
> To: Multiple recipients of Dewayne-Net <dewayne-net () warpspeed com>
> Subject: [Dewayne-Net] The Pentagon's 'Terminator Conundrum': Robots That Could Kill on Their Own
> Reply-To: dewayne-net () warpspeed com
>
> The Pentagon’s ‘Terminator Conundrum’: Robots That Could Kill on Their Own
> The United States has put artificial intelligence at the center of its defense strategy, with weapons that can 
> identify targets and make decisions.
> By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and JOHN MARKOFF
> Oct 25 2016
> <http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/26/us/pentagon-artificial-intelligence-terminator.html>
>
> CAMP EDWARDS, Mass. — The small drone, with its six whirring rotors, swept past the replica of a Middle Eastern 
> village and closed in on a mosque-like structure, its camera scanning for targets.
>
> No humans were remotely piloting the drone, which was nothing more than a machine that could be bought on Amazon. But 
> armed with advanced artificial intelligence software, it had been transformed into a robot that could find and 
> identify the half-dozen men carrying replicas of AK-47s around the village and pretending to be insurgents.
>
> As the drone descended slightly, a purple rectangle flickered on a video feed that was being relayed to engineers 
> monitoring the test. The drone had locked onto a man obscured in the shadows, a display of hunting prowess that 
> offered an eerie preview of how the Pentagon plans to transform warfare.
>
> Almost unnoticed outside defense circles, the Pentagon has put artificial intelligence at the center of its strategy 
> to maintain the United States’ position as the world’s dominant military power. It is spending billions of dollars to 
> develop what it calls autonomous and semiautonomous weapons and to build an arsenal stocked with the kind of weaponry 
> that until now has existed only in Hollywood movies and science fiction, raising alarm among scientists and activists 
> concerned by the implications of a robot arms race.
>
> The Defense Department is designing robotic fighter jets that would fly into combat alongside manned aircraft. It has 
> tested missiles that can decide what to attack, and it has built ships that can hunt for enemy submarines, stalking 
> those it finds over thousands of miles, without any help from humans.
>
> “If Stanley Kubrick directed ‘Dr. Strangelove’ again, it would be about the issue of autonomous weapons,” said 
> Michael Schrage, a research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.
>
> Defense officials say the weapons are needed for the United States to maintain its military edge over China, Russia 
> and other rivals, who are also pouring money into similar research (as are allies, such as Britain and Israel). The 
> Pentagon’s latest budget outlined $18 billion to be spent over three years on technologies that included those needed 
> for autonomous weapons.
>
> “China and Russia are developing battle networks that are as good as our own. They can see as far as ours can see; 
> they can throw guided munitions as far as we can,” said Robert O. Work, the deputy defense secretary, who has been a 
> driving force for the development of autonomous weapons. “What we want to do is just make sure that we would be able 
> to win as quickly as we have been able to do in the past.”
>
> Just as the Industrial Revolution spurred the creation of powerful and destructive machines like airplanes and tanks 
> that diminished the role of individual soldiers, artificial intelligence technology is enabling the Pentagon to 
> reorder the places of man and machine on the battlefield the same way it is transforming ordinary life with computers 
> that can see, hear and speak and cars that can drive themselves.
>
> The new weapons would offer speed and precision unmatched by any human while reducing the number — and cost — of 
> soldiers and pilots exposed to potential death and dismemberment in battle. The challenge for the Pentagon is to 
> ensure that the weapons are reliable partners for humans and not potential threats to them.
>
> At the core of the strategic shift envisioned by the Pentagon is a concept that officials call centaur warfighting. 
> Named for the half-man and half-horse in Greek mythology, the strategy emphasizes human control and autonomous 
> weapons as ways to augment and magnify the creativity and problem-solving skills of soldiers, pilots and sailors, not 
> replace them.
>
> The weapons, in the Pentagon’s vision, would be less like the Terminator and more like the comic-book superhero Iron 
> Man, Mr. Work said in an interview.
>
> “There’s so much fear out there about killer robots and Skynet,” the murderous artificial intelligence network of the 
> “Terminator” movies, Mr. Work said. “That’s not the way we envision it at all.”
>
> When it comes to decisions over life and death, “there will always be a man in the loop,” he said.
>
> Beyond the Pentagon, though, there is deep skepticism that such limits will remain in place once the technologies to 
> create thinking weapons are perfected. Hundreds of scientists and experts warned in an open letter last year that 
> developing even the dumbest of intelligent weapons risked setting off a global arms race. The result, the letter 
> warned, would be fully independent robots that can kill, and are cheap and as readily available to rogue states and 
> violent extremists as they are to great powers.
>
> “Autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow,” the letter said.
>
> [snip]



-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/18849915-ae8fa580
Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-aa268125
Unsubscribe Now: 
https://www.listbox.com/unsubscribe/?member_id=18849915&id_secret=18849915-32545cb4&post_id=20161025174606:6CD771D4-9AFC-11E6-9048-5956F010038B
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com