3 ms·

Telepresence, at least in terms of overall kinetic impact, is going to easily trump bioenhancements. Combat AI makes much more sense, since they can react fast

by kiba 14y ago

Telepresence, at least in terms of overall kinetic impact, is going to easily trump bioenhancements. Combat AI makes much more sense, since they can react faster than a human sitting behind a computer separated by a further thousand miles away. The latency will add up, and reaction speed is going to be a decisive factors between combat robots. Telepresence might makes much more sense if you can decide on a slower time frame such as strategic or tactical decisions but those will be increasingly be made by the AIs or the humans near them.

DanielBMarkham 14y ago
Agreed. I generalized, but you are entirely correct. You can't beat the speed of light, or the time it takes nerve impulses to fire Especially once we see armed robots facing other robots, the people will quickly be shuffled out of the mix. Having said that, my bet is that telepresence still rules to some degree. What you'll see is more strategic control. Just like with HFT, the tactical stuff will simply happen too quickly for meat bags. It'll be interesting if we start seeing a "war of missiles" for land forces like we've seen play out in the skies. Ground-to-ground anti-robotic ordinance shouldn't be too difficult to produce. It would have a much different signature than other forms of ordinance. If the pattern holds, this would lead to stealth robots, which would be a very interesting development. Hoards of invisible, lethal, ground-based intelligent robots is a pretty freaking scary scenario.
zackelan 14y ago
Right now, most drones are fighting non-robotic targets, and doing it with an emphasis on stealth (for example, flying so high that forces on the ground can't see or hear them). This makes latency less of a factor, since the human operators can take their time in selecting targets, and are fairly confident that they won't face any sudden attacks. As drone-on-drone combat becomes more common, you're definitely correct that more decisions will be made by the drones, without human intervention. I can imagine drones having a bedrock set of commands that don't require human approval (such as, "if another aircraft is shooting at you, drop what you're doing and shoot back"). Humans would still provide overall goals, such as "blow up that bunker", but the drones will have increasing autonomy in how that is carried out. There's an interesting parallel to the Mars rovers here, precisely because of the massive latency, even though Mars isn't an actively hostile environment. I don't recall the source, but I remember reading about Curiosity having much more autonomy than previous versions. It's given the same bedrock set of commands ("don't drive off cliffs", "don't smash into large rocks", etc), and human operators give it a similar set of high-level goals ("drive towards that weird outcropping over there"). This lets it explore much more efficiently than driving a few feet, waiting on an Mars-Earth-Mars round-trip for instructions, and so on.
protomyth 14y ago
"they can react faster than a human sitting behind a computer separated by a further thousand miles away" Maybe. The problem is identifying friend and foes. An AI might need more time than an actual person. Beyond that, losing a robot is not a big deal compared to losing a person, so the mistakes made in the field (ex. killing an innocent person who happened to get in the way) can be lessened because the fear of death is no longer there for the soldier.
- DanBC 14y ago
  > Beyond that, losing a robot is not a big deal compared to losing a person, so the mistakes made in the field (ex. killing an innocent person who happened to get in the way) can be lessened because the fear of death is no longer there for the soldier. "Friendly fire" from remote-operated robots would be pretty hard for people to cope with. 'Robots killed my dad, a hero soldier who fought for this country' is a headline no-one wants to read.
  - tlb 14y ago
    FWIW, here are the causes of death of US soldiers in Iraq [1]: 2573 Hostile action 2496 IED 665 Non-combat 402 Helicopter accident 361 Vehicle accident 63 Unknown 39 other-unknown 31 Airplane crash Over 800 are accidents, and IEDs are just enemy robots. 1. http://apps.washingtonpost.com/national/fallen/ http://apps.washingtonpost.com/national/fallen/
  - protomyth 14y ago
    I need to rephrase, I guess... If we put robots in the field and leave our soldier at home / base using telepresence to control the robots, the soldier don't have the immediate fear of death and can take the moment needed to identify friend, bystanders, or foes. Friendly fire wouldn't be much of a problem if none of our soldiers are actually in the combat zone. Robot blowing up, bad but no headlines.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  Exactly. "You can't safely return fire, so allow yourself to be killed" is something you can say to a robot, but not to a human.
tlb 14y ago
The point of war these days isn't to kill the enemy, but to convince them to surrender and join your side. Faster combat reactions might kill enemy soldiers faster, but if that were the goal you would just drop bombs on them. You get people to surrender by being reasonable and helpful until they shoot at you, and then fighting back fairly following the rules of war. You have to make being a soldier in your army seem like a better life than being a soldier in their army. Telepresence and combat AI have some value, but will not achieve the main goals.

by kiba 14y ago

DanielBMarkham 14y ago

Agreed. I generalized, but you are entirely correct. You can't beat the speed of light, or the time it takes nerve impulses to fire Especially once we see armed robots facing other robots, the people will quickly be shuffled out of the mix. Having said that, my bet is that telepresence still rules to some degree. What you'll see is more strategic control. Just like with HFT, the tactical stuff will simply happen too quickly for meat bags. It'll be interesting if we start seeing a "war of missiles" for land forces like we've seen play out in the skies. Ground-to-ground anti-robotic ordinance shouldn't be too difficult to produce. It would have a much different signature than other forms of ordinance. If the pattern holds, this would lead to stealth robots, which would be a very interesting development. Hoards of invisible, lethal, ground-based intelligent robots is a pretty freaking scary scenario.

zackelan 14y ago

Right now, most drones are fighting non-robotic targets, and doing it with an emphasis on stealth (for example, flying so high that forces on the ground can't see or hear them). This makes latency less of a factor, since the human operators can take their time in selecting targets, and are fairly confident that they won't face any sudden attacks. As drone-on-drone combat becomes more common, you're definitely correct that more decisions will be made by the drones, without human intervention. I can imagine drones having a bedrock set of commands that don't require human approval (such as, "if another aircraft is shooting at you, drop what you're doing and shoot back"). Humans would still provide overall goals, such as "blow up that bunker", but the drones will have increasing autonomy in how that is carried out. There's an interesting parallel to the Mars rovers here, precisely because of the massive latency, even though Mars isn't an actively hostile environment. I don't recall the source, but I remember reading about Curiosity having much more autonomy than previous versions. It's given the same bedrock set of commands ("don't drive off cliffs", "don't smash into large rocks", etc), and human operators give it a similar set of high-level goals ("drive towards that weird outcropping over there"). This lets it explore much more efficiently than driving a few feet, waiting on an Mars-Earth-Mars round-trip for instructions, and so on.

protomyth 14y ago

"they can react faster than a human sitting behind a computer separated by a further thousand miles away" Maybe. The problem is identifying friend and foes. An AI might need more time than an actual person. Beyond that, losing a robot is not a big deal compared to losing a person, so the mistakes made in the field (ex. killing an innocent person who happened to get in the way) can be lessened because the fear of death is no longer there for the soldier.

DanBC 14y ago
> Beyond that, losing a robot is not a big deal compared to losing a person, so the mistakes made in the field (ex. killing an innocent person who happened to get in the way) can be lessened because the fear of death is no longer there for the soldier. "Friendly fire" from remote-operated robots would be pretty hard for people to cope with. 'Robots killed my dad, a hero soldier who fought for this country' is a headline no-one wants to read.
- tlb 14y ago
  FWIW, here are the causes of death of US soldiers in Iraq [1]: 2573 Hostile action 2496 IED 665 Non-combat 402 Helicopter accident 361 Vehicle accident 63 Unknown 39 other-unknown 31 Airplane crash Over 800 are accidents, and IEDs are just enemy robots. 1. http://apps.washingtonpost.com/national/fallen/ http://apps.washingtonpost.com/national/fallen/
- protomyth 14y ago
  I need to rephrase, I guess... If we put robots in the field and leave our soldier at home / base using telepresence to control the robots, the soldier don't have the immediate fear of death and can take the moment needed to identify friend, bystanders, or foes. Friendly fire wouldn't be much of a problem if none of our soldiers are actually in the combat zone. Robot blowing up, bad but no headlines.
Symmetry 14y ago
Exactly. "You can't safely return fire, so allow yourself to be killed" is something you can say to a robot, but not to a human.

tlb 14y ago

The point of war these days isn't to kill the enemy, but to convince them to surrender and join your side. Faster combat reactions might kill enemy soldiers faster, but if that were the goal you would just drop bombs on them. You get people to surrender by being reasonable and helpful until they shoot at you, and then fighting back fairly following the rules of war. You have to make being a soldier in your army seem like a better life than being a soldier in their army. Telepresence and combat AI have some value, but will not achieve the main goals.