Posted on 09/20/2011 5:36:05 AM PDT by markomalley
One afternoon last fall at Fort Benning, Ga., two model-size planes took off, climbed to 800 and 1,000 feet, and began criss-crossing the military base in search of an orange, green and blue tarp.
The automated, unpiloted planes worked on their own, with no human guidance, no hand on any control.
After 20 minutes, one of the aircraft, carrying a computer that processed images from an onboard camera, zeroed in on the tarp and contacted the second plane, which flew nearby and used its own sensors to examine the colorful object. Then one of the aircraft signaled to an unmanned car on the ground so it could take a final, close-up look.
Target confirmed.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
((wink))
Greeeeeeaaaattt..... < /s>
The plans for this technology are probably already on their way to China.
This is the kind of thinking you get when you inject political correctness into a war. It started with Vietnam, when some politico decided to overrule the generals who should be running the war and said we can no longer bomb Hanoi. Sorry, Bucko, but war is hell on earth and the faster and more intense you make it so on your enemy, the sooner you both can return to a non-war status. Whether it's a Dr Spock type refusing to discipline a child or one of the children calling themselves a politician in DC who is trying to run a war they know nothing about, their actions ultimately make life worse.
Why can’t they work on something usefull like a AI vending machine that can tell when I’m thirsty/hungry...and come find me with a coke and a pack of M&M’s? LOL
2.A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3.A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Some of those surgical-style attacks are too precise to instil the additional fear of collateral damage to the enemy. The more they fear being attacked by us the better.
Ping.
No, it started earlier than Nam.
It started September 18, 1947 when the pc nuclear guilt folks turned the Department of WAR into the National Military Establishment (NME),
in preparation for downgrading to the Department of Defense (DoD,) in 1949.
Stinkin’ Parthian hoodlums. Probably smoked cigarettes and listened to loud music, too. Crassus was a good singer, though. It was said that he had a golden throat.
“This is the kind of thinking you get when you inject political correctness into a war. It started with Vietnam, when some politico decided to overrule the generals who should be running the war and said we can no longer bomb Hanoi. Sorry, Bucko, but war is hell on earth and the faster and more intense you make it so on your enemy, the sooner you both can return to a non-war status. Whether it’s a Dr Spock type refusing to discipline a child or one of the children calling themselves a politician in DC who is trying to run a war they know nothing about, their actions ultimately make life worse.”
You are absolutely correct!
You forgot the Zeroth Law: No robot can injure humanity, nor allow humanity to come to harm through its inaction.
Giskard.
Met him once, What a brain.
Note to self. Replace blue tarp covering boat with camo tarp.
This new micro-computer drone stuff may be -- in the right hands, with the right plans --- the remedy: by making weapons more precise in targeting, more discriminating in terms of shielding noncombatants, and more effective in obliterating the most important enemy military assets.
It seems to me that nothing was more indiscriminate that siege-warfare such as practiced against Jericho, Jerusalem, or any one of a thousand other places in the two millennia, say, between 600 BC and 1400 AD --- well before the advent of modern weapons of mass destruction. Starvation is a WMD. The subsequent cholera, typhoid and dysentery upon the weakened populations, are WMD. As are the finale, the coming of the siege engines and the tireless, merciless swords.
Surely it is more morally acceptable to go after identified enemy Mujahiddin armed to kill, than against the combatant's habibi and his baby. Antiseptic drone warfare? The more antiseptic, the better.
“It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it.”
R.E.Lee
That may be, to a person of noble spirit like Marse Robert, but I fear that men of more depraved character are excited by personally shooting and killing, and mutilating bodies afterward. As well, some atrocities are perperated even by normal, decent men in the grip of extended fear, anger, and physical and emotional exhaustion. The less we put our own good men into hellish situations like that, the better. I speak as the mother of a Marine Iraq veteran.
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