(KILLER ROBOT THREAD) Every development in humanoid robots gets followed by an outpouring of "the machines are taking over!" fears. Mostly kidding, but not completely. I wrote a book on this stuff, and I can tell you the killer robots are coming, but they won't look like people.https://twitter.com/CalebHowe/status/994814164970491904 …
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Early drone swarms used a mothership to issue commands. But that means if the central drone malfunctions or gets damaged, the whole swarm stops working. Now swarms use "emergent intelligence," like ants or bees. Individuals are dumb, but the group, effectively, is smart. 9/x
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Each member of the drone swarm--like each ant or bee--follows simple rules in relation to each other. Follow the ant in front of you to get food. Don't get too close or too far from another drone in the swarm. From these simple individual rules, group intelligence emerges. 10/x
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Drone swarms have immense military potential, for both surveillance and combat. Also many dangerous implications. The US Navy's already experimenting with a drone swarm called LOCUST. You can see (partial) test videos. 11/xhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qW77hVqux10 …
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Terrorists, insurgents, and criminals will make use of drone swarms as well. In January, a small swarm controlled by Syrian rebels attacked a Russian base. And last year, a gang in Colorado used a drone swarm to obstruct FBI agents as they tried to rescue hostages. 12/x
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So while humanoid robots are often the bad guys in movies--Terminator, Ultron, the Will Smith version of I, Robot--the real killer machines of the future will be various shapes and sizes, with a superhuman ability to coordinate group actions. Feel better now?
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I can hear my publisher
@ibtauris in my head: "You wrote a thread on killer robots and you didn't plug the book? Plug the book!" Ok fine. "Drones and Terrorism"--Covers some of the stuff in this thread and more unsettling awesomeness. Available now. (END) https://www.amazon.com/Drones-Terrorism-Asymmetric-Warfare-Security/dp/1784538302/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1522173339&sr=8-1&keywords=drones+terrorism&dpID=61VwSgYN1OL&preST=_SY291_BO1,204,203,200_QL40_&dpSrc=srch …Show this thread
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So how much autonomy should robots have on the battlefield? Where should humans be in the chain of decision making? And what do we (US) do if our adversaries choose to allow total autonomy and we don't?
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Those are some of the biggest questions. There's so much tactical advantage in autonomy that it's pretty much inevitable. Like autopilot on airplanes, people will get used to it. I'd draw the line at deciding to take a life (though machines will probably end up doing that too).
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