The UN Will Finally Decide In 2017 If Armies Can Use ‘Killer Robots’

[The Berean]

What about a robot that's not bipedal? What about something that moves like a machine, but thinks like a human? A shape we haven't seen yet, not one that seeks to look and move like a human?

Not contesting, just thinking.

Sure, that's possible. Don't police now have armed tracked robots?

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[annabenedetti]

Isn't it limited by the training, though?

Google Translate's just made a big jump in the way it's "thinking."

They’re all moving to this method not only because they can improve machine translation, but because they can improve it in a much faster and much broader way. “The key thing about neural network models is that they are able to generalize better from the data,” says Microsoft researcher Arul Menezes. “With the previous model, no matter how much data we threw at them, they failed to make basic generalizations. At some point, more data was just not making them any better.”

For machine translation, Google is using a form of deep neural network called an LSTM, short for long short-term memory. An LSTM can retain information in both the short and the long term—kind of like your own memory. That allows it learn in more complex ways. As it analyzes a sentence, it can remember the beginning as it gets to the end. That’s different from Google’s previous translation method, Phrase-Based Machine Translation, which breaks sentences into individual words and phrases. The new method looks at the entire collection of words.

Of course, researchers have been trying to get LSTM to work on translation for years. The trouble with LSTMs for machine translation was that they couldn’t operate at the pace we have all come to expect from online service. Google finally got it to work at speed—fast enough to run a service across the Internet at large. “Without doing lots of engineering work and algorithmic work to improve the models,” says Microsoft researcher Jacob Devlin, “the speed is very much slower than traditional models.”

According to Schuster, Google has achieved this speed partly through changes to the LSTMs themselves. Deep neural networks consists of layer after layer of mathematical calculations—linear algebra—with the results of one layer feeding into the next. One trick Google uses is to start the calculations for the second layer before the first layer is finished—and so on. But Schuster also says that much of the speed is driven by Google’s tensor processing units, chips the company specifically built for AI. With TPUs, Schuster says, the same sentence that once took ten seconds to translate via this LSTM model now takes 300 milliseconds.
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[Quincy]

Wow, Quincy. That's just so visual. And a scary thought.

It's a good reason to not allow the development of robotic warfare, I suppose. While I don't think any a.i. will ever escape the confines of it's programming and I don't believe anyone will train one to turn on people, it's still terrifying, for sure.

Now, if nations were to only engage in robotic warfare and human lives were never lost to war again, I totally go for it. But developing robots just to slaughter nomadic jihadists or similar, no, that's just a nightmare.

 

[annabenedetti]

Sure, that's possible. Don't police now have armed tracked robots?

Well, yes, but as I'd mentioned upthread, that's not what I'm talking about although there are ethical issues with those as well.

 

[annabenedetti]

It's a good reason to not allow the development of robotic warfare, I suppose. While I don't think any a.i. will ever escape the confines of it's programming and I don't believe anyone will train one to turn on people, it's still terrifying, for sure.

There are a lot of Singularity hypotheses out there.

Now, if nations were to only engage in robotic warfare and human lives were never lost to war again, I totally go for it. But developing robots just to slaughter nomadic jihadists or similar, no, that's just a nightmare.

Which can be done now with a human-operated drone. Imagine a fleet of drones equipped with biological weapons.

 

[Quincy]

Google Translate's just made a big jump in the way it's "thinking."

I can see the scary potential there, but as long as robots only have instructions for parsing data like that, I don't mind. For example, robots helping military commanders come up with plans faster, could be a great strategic advantage. As long as people don't try to create a Rambo Rosey.

 

[Quincy]

There are a lot of Singularity hypotheses out there.

I suppose it's possible. Perhaps people think a.i. will experience something like that because of Moore's Law, not sure. I don't know, it just seems very science fictiony and like Berean mentioned, the form matters. The form these a.i.s would have to require would trend towards something androidish, before they could destroy us. I think, or at least hope, that engineering can't pick up pace to a point that we couldn't just pull the plug on the whole thing, maybe?

I got to say, my hope is that if we ever create an a.i. that advanced, that we're smart enough to put it in it's own simulation, kind of like what God did with us .

Which can be done now with a human-operated drone. Imagine a fleet of drones equipped with biological weapons.

Terrifying scenario, indeed! But what if those drones were programmed to only attack other drones, or only be piloted by humans and the skills of drone pilots (or a.i. developers) 100s or 1000s of miles away actually determine the outcome of war, and no human life is lost at all?

 

[Right Divider]

I'm 100% for a ban.

But how long could the ban last?

Till the aliens land with theirs.

 

[steko]

Till the aliens land with theirs.

We should build an intergalactic wall! :noid:

 

[Right Divider]

We should build an intergalactic wall! :noid:

Let's just start with EarthDome™ first and see how goes first.

 

[glassjester]

Till the aliens land with theirs.

I think the ban would only be against using killer robots on humans, anyway.

 

[Right Divider]

I think the ban would only be against using killer robots on humans, anyway.

Good point. Aliens or alien robots would both be fair game.

 

[glassjester]

Good point. Aliens or alien robots would both be fair game.

Darn right.

I'll tell you what - nothing would unite the nations of the Earth better than an alien attack.
Maybe the governments of the world should stage one.

 

[annabenedetti]

I'll tell you what - nothing would unite the nations of the Earth better than an alien attack.

You know, that's a good point.

Maybe the governments of the world should stage one.

But let's not get carried away...

 

[ok doser]

Darn right.

I'll tell you what - nothing would unite the nations of the Earth better than an alien attack.
Maybe the governments of the world should stage one.

even better - we could hire some aliens to stage one


i hear california's full of aliens

 

[aCultureWarrior]

They've been using robots in combat and law enforcement for what, a decade or more? In some ways they save lives, and in some ways they take lives. Their use raises ethical questions that are going to have to be addressed, and sooner rather than later because the future is already here.

What's so surprising to me is that no Trump lemmings have come forward and said that the US is a sovereign nation and doesn't take orders from the United Nations.

I wonder how Donald Trump will address this issue, as he claims that he doesn't take orders from anyone.

 

[Crucible]

The military doesn't have anything that is 'autonomous', only things that are remotely controlled or, at most, programed to do limited tasks. They have 'trojan horses' that look like miniature AT-AT's, and they have devices to disarm bombs.

The technology isn't there yet, but it will be, and the UN isn't the world's authority- as soon as another country decides to use autonomous robots, it will compel others to do the same.
I feel like the UN talks just to be saying something a lot of the time

 

[rexlunae]

The military doesn't have anything that is 'autonomous', only things that are remotely controlled or, at most, programed to do limited tasks.

That's true, as far as I know. There are some UAVs that have semi-autonomous navigation, but even that requires a human-programmed flight plan. This is about preventing the tech from being developed, which is going to have a lot of incentive behind it.

 

[annabenedetti]

Yes, he made the distinction between that robot (human-operated, already existing and retro-fitted for a single job) and the future of military robots. But the potential ethical dilemmas are already being considered, and have been considered, for example, in our use of drones. But again, for now, the drones are operated by humans. But everything is moving forward so fast, and AI particularly in deep learning and neural network seems to be moving at warp speed. I was reading recently about companies snapping up academic AI experts and graduating AI engineers as fast as they could get them, offering graduates seven-figure salaries. Unfortunately I didn't save it and can't find it at the moment to link it here, but here's a different look at how fast things are advancing at companies such as Google.

I don't know a lot about the deep learning and neural networks of AI, but I pay attention to what I read and try to read from good sources, because it's my belief that AI may move faster than human ethics can keep up.

2016. What a difference a decade makes.

Killer robots are here – we must finally decide whether to accept them​

We can no longer ignore the growing threat of fully autonomous weapons. The world must either act to ban them or accept that they are the future of war

For years, we have had unconfirmed reports and rumours that AI-controlled weapons have killed soldiers on the battlefield without a human in the loop. Now, we know it has happened.​

​

As we report here, the use of autonomous killers in a test exercise marks a watershed in warfare. But we shouldn’t be surprised. The technology has existed for some time and humans have never invented a weapon and then refrained from using it.​

 

[VladtheDestroyer]

The UN is set to tackle the issue of killer robots amid concerns from Silicon Valley leaders and human rights organisations over the threat they pose to humanity.

Delegates representing 123 nations at the Convention on Conventional Weapons have agreed to form a group next year to address their use.
Human Rights Watch said the meeting marked a step “towards a ban” on weapons that can strike without human intervention.

. . . .

Dozens of artificial intelligence experts signed a letter last year, calling for an outright ban on the development of AI weapons.
The letter warned that killer robots would lower the threshold for going into battle and could help subdue populations and aid acts of genocide.

“The governments meeting in Geneva took an important step toward stemming the development of killer robots, but there is no time to lose” said Steve Goose, arms director of Human Rights Watch, a co-founder of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.

“Once these weapons exist, there will be no stopping them. The time to act on a pre-emptive ban is now.”

In the letter, the experts warned: “Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity.”

I have to say I don't like the whole killer robot idea. I think drones are bad enough. I hate to see men who are fighting in war, being forced to scurry around like a rat before he dies because a drone is chasing him. Just drop an atom bomb on his head and finish it already. It would be more humane.