7 ms·

This is really cool tech, but given the current political state, I can't help but worry about a powerful army of robots -- presumably with weapons attached -- b

This is really cool tech, but given the current political state, I can't help but worry about a powerful army of robots -- presumably with weapons attached -- being put into the hands of a leader we might consider to have "unreliable" judgement. I wonder: if a country can deploy an army of robots to achieve its military ends, how does that play out in the long run? Does this mean future wars will just be "our" droids versus "theirs"? Does this "solve" terrorism in the long run, or make it much worse. Also, seeing aggressive robots feels scary.

wott 10y ago
Is there still going to be a "theirs" standing after a first power deploys massively "our" robots?
- jameskegel 10y ago
  Allow me to ask you a rhetorical question: Do you see many Raytheon engineers telling the front lines who and where to shoot?
  - taneq 10y ago
    The moment those drones are given a degree of discretion in target selection, yes.
thescriptkiddie 10y ago
Too late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper#Sp...
danbruc 10y ago
What is even the point of having a war once you are fighting with robot armies? Why not just throw a coin and hand the country over to the side that picked the correct outcome? Use an unfair coin to correct for military strength. Or each side sends its best players for a game of Risk or Rock, Paper, Scissors or Command and Conquer. You get a winer and a loser, it does not take years and costs a fortune and you avoid all the unnecessary loss of life and the damage you have to fix after the war. That seems like a win for everyone involved. Well, that could actually also work right now, no need to wait for robot armies.
- krapp 10y ago
  If one side has the robot army, they'll target the human soldiers on the other side. If both sides have robot armies, they'll probably target one anothers' civilians. Nations are never going to rid themselves of the desire for war, or the need for war to involve bloodshed, because we're just another species of simian bludgeoning the out-group to death with extremely abstract and over-engineered rocks. We already have non-violent ways to resolve conflicts between nations, we fight wars explicitly to kill people.
  - danbruc 10y ago
    [...] they'll probably target one anothers' civilians. Which would be a first class war crime. Nations are never going to rid themselves of the desire for war, or the need for war to involve bloodshed, because we're just another species of simian bludgeoning the out-group to death with extremely abstract and over-engineered rocks. While that is not an uncommon point of view empirical evidence suggests otherwise, war seems to be in decline and seems to have shifted from wars between nations to civil wars and asymmetric wars. Some argue that advances in human behavior heavily lag behind technological advances and I tend to agree at least somewhat, but concluding that we will never manage to overcome this stupidity seems not really obvious to me. And I certainly hope that it is not true. We already have non-violent ways to resolve conflicts between nations, we fight wars explicitly to kill people. Force is the ultimate and only way to »resolve« conflicts if all other means fail. But I do not think we are killing people for the sake of it in wars, it is just a means to an end.
    - ceejayoz 10y ago
      > Which would be a first class war crime. War crime convictions are for the losing side.
- _ihaque 10y ago
  This was essentially the plot of an original series Star Trek episode, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon: In this episode, the crew of the USS Enterprise visits a planet whose people fight a computer-simulated war against a neighboring planet. Although the war is fought via computer simulation, the citizens of each planet have to submit to real executions inside "disintegration booths" to meet the casualty counts of the simulated attacks.
alva 10y ago
Because killing thousands upon thousands of innocent Afghanis, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Somalis, Yemenis and Syrian civilians so far with relatively conventional weapons has been reliable judgement? Maybe with robot armies they could have killed even more. These partisan trenches are blinding so many.
- joshpadnick 10y ago
  Of course those deaths are horrible. Even a single needless death is the most tragic thing in the world. The point of my question was that "conventional" weapons are still limited compared to robotic warfare / AI. Very strong military in the hands of a repressive regime has always been bad, but I fear the robot military age will make it far worse.
danblick 10y ago
I guess I'd worry more about rogue nations developing (cheaper) biological weapons and chemical weapons. I imagine it would be easier to build something like [1] than a robot like this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M139_bomblet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M139_bomblet
spangry 10y ago
In the short-medium term? It makes it easier for democratic countries to wage war, just or unjust. No more footage of coffins draped in flags coming off transport planes. No more soldiers coming home with PTSD or concussion-induced dementia. Just a bunch of guys in Langley, sitting in their cubicles, killing people on the other side of the world. The domestic propaganda goes down much smoother at this point. After all, who wants peace when we can win?
- aargh_aargh 10y ago
  > Just a bunch of guys in Langley, sitting in their cubicles, killing people on the other side of the world. I bet the lag would be terrible. Remember Grace Hopper.
  - spangry 10y ago
    I'm actually not from the US so hadn't heard of her until now. But I just read about her, and it sounds like she was a pretty awesome lady! And now you've got me curious about the lag... I'm guessing they could (would?) go most of the way via undersea cable (just as normal folks do), pop out somewhere close and then beam up to some satellite. I'm in Australia, and (I think) Puerto Rico is roughly on the other side of the word (although I did get a D in high school geography, so there's a good chance I'm wrong here). My round-trip ping time averages ~320ms to some random PR ISP (209.91.222.104). I have no idea how much extra latency a last-stage satellite hop would add in, but let's say it triples the latency. Almost a second in lag. So pretty terrible. I guess they'd need to use characters, er drones, with good AoE attacks...
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    > I bet the lag would be terrible. If they could route the link through a constellation of LEO satellites, then the lag would probably be comparable to what you get in a typical multiplayer FPS. Ground to LEO and back is 1ms to 14ms, depending on how high in LEO the satellite is (assuming satellite directly above your head). Space is pretty close to us. As for how to get that constellation up, well, SpaceX is working on making that pretty cheap.
  - 10y ago
abecedarius 10y ago
States have always been constrained by what their soldiers are willing to do for them. It's the difference between Tiananmen Square and Russia a couple years later. I think taking away that constraint is a bigger deal than how robots might change the nature of wars between states. This particular robot doesn't strike me as especially military, though yeah, it's kind of scary-moving.
mysterydip 10y ago
Even if the current policital leadership was someone you considered reliable and trustworthy, you should still be worried, because four or eight years from now someone you don't trust could be in control.

wott 10y ago

Is there still going to be a "theirs" standing after a first power deploys massively "our" robots?

jameskegel 10y ago
Allow me to ask you a rhetorical question: Do you see many Raytheon engineers telling the front lines who and where to shoot?
- taneq 10y ago
  The moment those drones are given a degree of discretion in target selection, yes.

thescriptkiddie 10y ago

Too late: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper#Specifications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Atomics_MQ-9_Reaper#Sp...

danbruc 10y ago

What is even the point of having a war once you are fighting with robot armies? Why not just throw a coin and hand the country over to the side that picked the correct outcome? Use an unfair coin to correct for military strength. Or each side sends its best players for a game of Risk or Rock, Paper, Scissors or Command and Conquer. You get a winer and a loser, it does not take years and costs a fortune and you avoid all the unnecessary loss of life and the damage you have to fix after the war. That seems like a win for everyone involved. Well, that could actually also work right now, no need to wait for robot armies.

krapp 10y ago
If one side has the robot army, they'll target the human soldiers on the other side. If both sides have robot armies, they'll probably target one anothers' civilians. Nations are never going to rid themselves of the desire for war, or the need for war to involve bloodshed, because we're just another species of simian bludgeoning the out-group to death with extremely abstract and over-engineered rocks. We already have non-violent ways to resolve conflicts between nations, we fight wars explicitly to kill people.
- danbruc 10y ago
  [...] they'll probably target one anothers' civilians. Which would be a first class war crime. Nations are never going to rid themselves of the desire for war, or the need for war to involve bloodshed, because we're just another species of simian bludgeoning the out-group to death with extremely abstract and over-engineered rocks. While that is not an uncommon point of view empirical evidence suggests otherwise, war seems to be in decline and seems to have shifted from wars between nations to civil wars and asymmetric wars. Some argue that advances in human behavior heavily lag behind technological advances and I tend to agree at least somewhat, but concluding that we will never manage to overcome this stupidity seems not really obvious to me. And I certainly hope that it is not true. We already have non-violent ways to resolve conflicts between nations, we fight wars explicitly to kill people. Force is the ultimate and only way to »resolve« conflicts if all other means fail. But I do not think we are killing people for the sake of it in wars, it is just a means to an end.
  - ceejayoz 10y ago
    > Which would be a first class war crime. War crime convictions are for the losing side.
_ihaque 10y ago
This was essentially the plot of an original series Star Trek episode, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon: In this episode, the crew of the USS Enterprise visits a planet whose people fight a computer-simulated war against a neighboring planet. Although the war is fought via computer simulation, the citizens of each planet have to submit to real executions inside "disintegration booths" to meet the casualty counts of the simulated attacks.

alva 10y ago

Because killing thousands upon thousands of innocent Afghanis, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Somalis, Yemenis and Syrian civilians so far with relatively conventional weapons has been reliable judgement? Maybe with robot armies they could have killed even more. These partisan trenches are blinding so many.

joshpadnick 10y ago
Of course those deaths are horrible. Even a single needless death is the most tragic thing in the world. The point of my question was that "conventional" weapons are still limited compared to robotic warfare / AI. Very strong military in the hands of a repressive regime has always been bad, but I fear the robot military age will make it far worse.

danblick 10y ago

I guess I'd worry more about rogue nations developing (cheaper) biological weapons and chemical weapons. I imagine it would be easier to build something like [1] than a robot like this. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M139_bomblet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M139_bomblet

spangry 10y ago

In the short-medium term? It makes it easier for democratic countries to wage war, just or unjust. No more footage of coffins draped in flags coming off transport planes. No more soldiers coming home with PTSD or concussion-induced dementia. Just a bunch of guys in Langley, sitting in their cubicles, killing people on the other side of the world. The domestic propaganda goes down much smoother at this point. After all, who wants peace when we can win?

aargh_aargh 10y ago
> Just a bunch of guys in Langley, sitting in their cubicles, killing people on the other side of the world. I bet the lag would be terrible. Remember Grace Hopper.
- spangry 10y ago
  I'm actually not from the US so hadn't heard of her until now. But I just read about her, and it sounds like she was a pretty awesome lady! And now you've got me curious about the lag... I'm guessing they could (would?) go most of the way via undersea cable (just as normal folks do), pop out somewhere close and then beam up to some satellite. I'm in Australia, and (I think) Puerto Rico is roughly on the other side of the word (although I did get a D in high school geography, so there's a good chance I'm wrong here). My round-trip ping time averages ~320ms to some random PR ISP (209.91.222.104). I have no idea how much extra latency a last-stage satellite hop would add in, but let's say it triples the latency. Almost a second in lag. So pretty terrible. I guess they'd need to use characters, er drones, with good AoE attacks...
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > I bet the lag would be terrible. If they could route the link through a constellation of LEO satellites, then the lag would probably be comparable to what you get in a typical multiplayer FPS. Ground to LEO and back is 1ms to 14ms, depending on how high in LEO the satellite is (assuming satellite directly above your head). Space is pretty close to us. As for how to get that constellation up, well, SpaceX is working on making that pretty cheap.
- 10y ago

abecedarius 10y ago

States have always been constrained by what their soldiers are willing to do for them. It's the difference between Tiananmen Square and Russia a couple years later. I think taking away that constraint is a bigger deal than how robots might change the nature of wars between states. This particular robot doesn't strike me as especially military, though yeah, it's kind of scary-moving.

mysterydip 10y ago

Even if the current policital leadership was someone you considered reliable and trustworthy, you should still be worried, because four or eight years from now someone you don't trust could be in control.