Oh.My.Heck! Do they not realize that it’s robots’ “ethics” that lead to them trying to eliminate the source of the world’s problems: man. In all of the robot-takes-over-world type movies that is the issue, I, Robot, Eagle Eye, and The Terminator.
The US Army and Navy have both hired experts in the ethics of building machines to prevent the creation of an amoral Terminator-style killing machine that murders indiscriminately.
By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion in a research programme into “autonomous systems”, the military jargon for robots, on the basis that they would not succumb to fear or the desire for vengeance that afflicts frontline soldiers.
A British robotics expert has been recruited by the US Navy to advise them on building robots that do not violate the Geneva Conventions.
Colin Allen, a scientific philosopher at Indiana University’s has just published a book summarising his views entitled Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “The question they want answered is whether we can build automated weapons that would conform to the laws of war. Can we use ethical theory to help design these machines?”
We are doomed to make the creators of these books and movies prophets!
posted December 1, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Yeah, I read that and I thought of you. Maybe you’re right that this is the start of The Matrix. But I still think it’s many decades off. We definitely need to keep humans in the loop.
posted December 1, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Michele and ZZ, I think this is more than decades off. I have a CS degree and some AI training. AI has been a failure and I suspect that the human brain is not a Turing machine and our cognitive abilities in the areas of vision, language, and common sense reasoning can’t be emulated by Turing machines (computers).
But the Pentagon loves to waste money on this kind of stuff. I’ll worry about cybernetic killing machines when the following things come to pass:
Computers have reliable voice command interface that understands natural languages. In other words not a cheesy voice menu system.
A car drives itself on a busy freeways when given high level commands like go to a certain GPS coordinate. It needs to be able to plan its route and figure out when GPS coordinates can’t be reached by any road.
posted December 1, 2008 at 6:42 pm
I think you’re right MH. It’s my understanding this is an entirely theoretical study. My concern is that we even allow ourselves to think in this direction.
posted December 1, 2008 at 8:28 pm
Of course there will be somebody who will figure out how to disable the ethics circuit.
But fear not. We only have to dress up like robots and we will fool them.
posted December 1, 2008 at 8:55 pm
ZZ: “My concern is that we even allow ourselves to think in this direction.”
That’s a really good point, they are displaying really poor judgment on several levels.
posted December 1, 2008 at 8:59 pm
The Stepford Soldiers.