4 ms·

What if one of these gets out of control/hacked/malfunctions? This is one more reason we need weapons to protect ourselves.

anonymfus 10y ago
Then in the worst case you get out of the room and wait until the battery discharges. If you are seriously worrying about such situation you should also worry that robot can pick up the weapon.
- chillingeffect 10y ago
  How about in a case of a robot raping someone? Should I just let it rape me or someone near me until the batteries die? Sorry, I was lucky enough to be born in a country where I'm allowed to defend myself. And if a robot or a person starts raping me, I'm not going to let them finish until they wear out.
  - gene-h 10y ago
    Robots are currently bumbling electric imbeciles and do not perform well in such adversarial scenarios. They are also more fragile than they seem. One could permanently modify the robot's kinematics with the swift impact of an office chair or percussively decommission it's lidar sensor with a baseball bat.
    - daveguy 10y ago
      Or you could just step to the side and laugh while it tries to figure out how to re-orient itself.
      - Jack000 10y ago
        "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
- jonnycowboy 10y ago
  I imagine this robot is only a few weeks/months away from being able to plug itself in to recharge from any household socket.
  - anonymfus 10y ago
    Then you go to the distribution board and turn off electricity in household sockets of that room/apartments/house/block/street/city/country/planet.
gene-h 10y ago
Well if it gets out of control, it will probably fall over and not be able get up. If it malfunctions, probably the worst thing that could happen would be the battery pack catching fire, because of consumer safety laws there will be safeties in place to prevent this. Hacking is an interesting one, only because current laws assume the perpetrator must be in proximity to the crime. However, this robot is almost certainly not autonomous with the operator hidden behind the camera. Because it's not autonomous, it's going to be difficult to teleoperate over the internet. Telerobots are slow and not very capable[0]. With lag, it's going to be difficult to stab someone with a knife much less pick up a knife. However, even slow telerobots present interesting legal issues. One might hack a telerobot in the home of some people who are on vacation and use it to unlock the doors so some guy can go in and steal stuff. http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/the-heaphy-project http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-softwar...
daveguy 10y ago
One of the best XKCDs ever is about this what-if scenario. It addresses full robot sentience -- if they suddenly became aware and tried to take over the world Terminator style. An "out of control / hack / malfunction" would be even more laughable: https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/

anonymfus 10y ago

Then in the worst case you get out of the room and wait until the battery discharges. If you are seriously worrying about such situation you should also worry that robot can pick up the weapon.

chillingeffect 10y ago
How about in a case of a robot raping someone? Should I just let it rape me or someone near me until the batteries die? Sorry, I was lucky enough to be born in a country where I'm allowed to defend myself. And if a robot or a person starts raping me, I'm not going to let them finish until they wear out.
- gene-h 10y ago
  Robots are currently bumbling electric imbeciles and do not perform well in such adversarial scenarios. They are also more fragile than they seem. One could permanently modify the robot's kinematics with the swift impact of an office chair or percussively decommission it's lidar sensor with a baseball bat.
  - daveguy 10y ago
    Or you could just step to the side and laugh while it tries to figure out how to re-orient itself.
    - Jack000 10y ago
      "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."
jonnycowboy 10y ago
I imagine this robot is only a few weeks/months away from being able to plug itself in to recharge from any household socket.
- anonymfus 10y ago
  Then you go to the distribution board and turn off electricity in household sockets of that room/apartments/house/block/street/city/country/planet.

gene-h 10y ago

Well if it gets out of control, it will probably fall over and not be able get up. If it malfunctions, probably the worst thing that could happen would be the battery pack catching fire, because of consumer safety laws there will be safeties in place to prevent this. Hacking is an interesting one, only because current laws assume the perpetrator must be in proximity to the crime. However, this robot is almost certainly not autonomous with the operator hidden behind the camera. Because it's not autonomous, it's going to be difficult to teleoperate over the internet. Telerobots are slow and not very capable[0]. With lag, it's going to be difficult to stab someone with a knife much less pick up a knife. However, even slow telerobots present interesting legal issues. One might hack a telerobot in the home of some people who are on vacation and use it to unlock the doors so some guy can go in and steal stuff. http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-software/the-heaphy-project http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-softwar...

daveguy 10y ago

One of the best XKCDs ever is about this what-if scenario. It addresses full robot sentience -- if they suddenly became aware and tried to take over the world Terminator style. An "out of control / hack / malfunction" would be even more laughable: https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/ https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/