warbots good

This is all to the good. If we can once and for all eliminate the moral equation and go with pure realpolitik we will benefit in ways unimaginable. Might not be good for other countries, but they don't vote in our elections.

Posted by: Chuck | 1/16/09

Whole world will be slave of U.S.

Today U.S. is strongest military power in the world,not a single nation dare to oppose to U.S.When U.S.will creat millions of Robots for war,U.S. will dance to all nation on his tune,if any nation oppose to it that one is suicide of that nation.

Posted by: Ramesh Raghuvanshi | 1/16/09

Amazing

Pretty amazing what we have come to is it not? www.anonweb.pro.tc

Posted by: John Meisen | 1/16/09

balance?

I would have expected a balanced discussion to mention friendly fire and collateral damage -- two abhorrent consequences of having humans in the loop -- not to mention the "fog of war".

Posted by: drwtwilner | 1/16/09

warbots run amok

Let us not forgot that whatever may be used against the enemy can also be used by those in power against their own people, (us) especially as a force for both the implementation and control of facism and totalitarianism in the hands of the extreme right-wing. What immediately comes to mind is the use of electronic "spiders" in Spielburg's movie "Minority Report."

Posted by: jwc | 1/16/09

everybody will have them

We assume only the wealthy nations will have robots -- but now anybody can have a car or cell phone. Technology just gets cheaper; what happens when any nation (or organization) can have robots that can fly in 'our' skies? Let's hope we as a world finally learn to live in peace, and have only a police force for 'criminals', like we have in some nations today... not perfect, true, but following the rule of law, reducing disparities in wealth, and allowing for free expression, dissent, and peaceful change of government through elections (as happened recently in the USA) is the only method that has worked so far.

Posted by: G-man | 1/16/09

In the end, its just a job...

Ask any Infantry grunt or even the medics I commanded during wartime what they think of the mission the just conducted, and they will usually respond with a familiar answer...Its just a job. Replacing soldiers with robots is an amazing improvement for the medical field, signal corps, logistics, etc, but the bottom line is you're not only taking away a major piece of tradition, but also hundreds of thousands of jobs from many men and women who needed the financial benefits of the military.

Posted by: Medical Platoon Leader | 1/16/09

Depraved Butchery

So the purpose of war is indeed butchery: to kill the other without gettings ones own hands dirty. Just like in a meat works. This is utterly depraved, as is the mindset of those who advocate it without seeing the obscenity of it. And as for just cause. There is not such thing

Posted by: Strefanash | 1/16/09

Check your bias

JWC - Why is this technology particularly a threat from the "extreme right-wing"? 20th century history shows us that the political left has at least as strong a tendency towards implementing authoritarian designs. In politics, there are no angels.

Posted by: Paul M. | 1/16/09

JWC Dont forget the extreme left

It's much stronger in the west than the vestigal extreme right, and Totalitarian dreams are clasped just as tightly to their breasts as to those on the far right.

Posted by: Dani Leone | 1/17/09

Gaza

Look at the recent urban warfare in Gaza and how few casualties the IDF suffered. Quite remarkable. However the civilian population suffered terribly and this is not acceptable to right thinking people. When you achieve the battlefield dominance the Israelis had in Gaza you have to wonder why there are so many 'accidents', why so many innocent people died and how so many neutral buildings came to be hit.

Posted by: David | 1/17/09

killing the bad guys

While the use of robots in warfare is likely to expand, especially in high risk or expence roles like UAVs and static sentry roles, the reason the US is essentialy failing in its current deployments is that killing the bad guys is not the job. The job is normalising unstable regions and probably demobilising militias or guerillas. These are human functions, and a concentration on technical innovation, however brilliant, distracts from the task that is presently taxing the US military. That is, the problem they face on current deployments is not an insufficiency of killing power, but a lack of human contacts and resources, and ways to constructively engage with local populations. Actually a very good article - just remember though - in twenty years your enemies will usually have your technology. By that time you would probably prefer to have reached some kind of consensus.

Posted by: stuart-munro | 1/17/09

Concensus? Peace?

Perhaps there exists a prophet or genius or magician or politician who can imagine a workable, realistic, implementable, and (dare I say) inspirational (because it'll have to be) consensus- and peace-making future, but given the current trends (cultural, technological, global, etc.) I am without hope for the future of humanity. That is not to say I lack hope, but my hope is detached from the notion of human moral evolution. I fully expect the worst parts of this article to be reality one day, and while (as one poster mentioned) the article lacked some necessary balance with respect to the human deficiencies being mitigated by a robotic army I have no expectation that the future being created by a robotic army, a disengaged populace and an almost inevitable technocracy will be a bright one. Forgive my Christian "nihilism", but "LORD come quickly!"

Posted by: Cancer | 1/19/09

Robots

Inevitable. We can only imagine what these machines will look like in 10, 20, 30 years. Just as swords gave way to muskets and muskets to machine guns, the mechanics of war become ever more efficient. We can only hope that the good guys (us) will have the best ones.

Posted by: Will | 1/20/09

automation.

Very interesting piece. It does raise some issues that arise in other discussions of automation, such as in manufacturing, communications and medicine. The main one is how the effects of economic specialization change the equilibrium of an economy. The second is that the consequences of failures scale with the benefits of technology. Robotics will provide complete strategic dominance to the united states, that is until it doesn't, and it fails randomly and terribly. Moderate and judicious use of robotics will ensure their usefulness, but subjecting enemy populations to machine overlords is a recipe for our own surprising extermination.

Posted by: jreid | 1/20/09

Not Just Yet

"With continuing advances in artificial intelligence, machines may soon overcome humans’ main comparative advantage today, the mushy gray blob inside our skull. This is not just a matter of raw computing power. " As a robot software developer with up-to-date knowledge of the field I completely disagree with that statement. AI is a stagnant field. There has been nothing new or exciting for years. We are are not even beginning to get close to approaching the human brain. The problem is that AI development suffers from the inverse of Moore's Law - which states that the power of a computer doubles every two years. The AI corollary is that to double the intelligence of an AI system (or robot), the complexity of the software grows geometrically. I.e. to make a robot just twice as "smart", the software complexity grows by a factor of 10. And therefore the combination of cost, personnel, and time required to develop it. There is noreason to believe this will change. Under current methods, creating an even remotely plausible human surrogate intelligence would take hundreds of years. An close analogy can be found in Windows OS development. Vista took longer to develop and cost more to develop than any prior Windows OS, yet it's really not better than XP. Arguably worse. Right now we probably have most of the sensor and computer hardware necessary to create robots with some credible subset of human brain capability. But our software development is not up to the task. We just don't have the tools - we can't handle the complexity. In order for the author's scenario to become reality, we need, I think, several massive breakthroughs in the fields of AI and software development. And those are hard to predict.... Until then robots will serve well in valuable niche roles like EOD, counter-sniper, recon, etc. And they'll appear "smart" but really won't have true AI - the ability to learn or adapt to unpredictable situations.

Posted by: RobotDeveloper | 1/20/09

Not Buying It.

I don't buy the whole "battlefeild dominance" argument. Sure these things might work when up against a low-tech adversary in a foreign theatre. What happens when the force they are up against has robots of their own. As the article clearly states these things are highly portable and can be manned from thousands of kilometers away. What would a dozen robots with claymores strapped to them do in New York during rush hour? Meanwhile the guy driving them is sitting in Abu Dhabi and who’ll be long gone before they trace the link. Supposedly, you get 72 virgins for blowing yourself up as a suicide bomber. How many do you get if you don’t commit suicide? Hhhmm. So much for "strategic advantage." These things lend theselves to potential terrorist use a lot more than they do to conventional armies.

Posted by: BA | 1/22/09

Good guys?

Today the US military are the "good guys", and the new robotic technologies promise to dramatically increase their effectiveness. But will the USA always be good? A nightmare scenario is where the USA gets taken over by breast-beating ideologues who dress evil as good and then subjugate humankind. If that happens (and America is on steady course), the 20th C horrors of communism and nazism will pale in comparison. Horror.

Posted by: Arthur | 1/23/09

illegal invasion - immense collateral damage

There is nothing justified about the illegal US invasion of Iraq. The CIA could have helped Bush & Cheney get rid of Saddam without the immense collateral they are now responsible for. And many of the so-called "bad guys" are just people who want the U.S.A. out of their country and oil fields.

Posted by: Lise | 1/25/09

Great

This is an excellent article; good work Mr. Singer.

Posted by: Josh | 1/25/09

Next unabomber

"The robots are made of commercially available parts." The next UNABOMBER might be a bit more advanst than the last one.

Posted by: Karl | 1/27/09

A Fundamental Error

Thruout this article there is a fundamental misconception that features in many mistaken decisions. When the government acquires a robot or a bomb, that is when it incurs the cost. It costs nothing to explode the bomb or the robot. If the explodee MUST be replaced, then the cost is incurred at replacement. It is very harmful in my opinion to hold soldiers accountable for using weapons because of a sunk cost incurred perhaps a generation before. Regards, Bill Drissel

Posted by: Bill Drissel | 1/30/09

Robots don't matter

Robots are not a war-winner, but another tool. A bombing mission by a drone or an f15 are equivalent -- someone presses a button. Even if a smart-drone decided to press its button without humans in the loop -- same. Some Generals reads a report. Pins are taken off a board. Victors party. Same as it ever was. Wars are won and lost by strategy -- not by weapons. I am not a military historian, so I don't know if the advent of the machine gun or airplane caused more wars, but they didn't win 'em.

Posted by: redbag | 2/5/09

No bright future for Robo Ethics

Gotta tell you, the future ain't looking bright: Autonomous sentry robots that shoot and kill on sight stationed at the borders of Korea and Israel, more than 12,000 war robots presently serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, funding for the US Future Combat System exceeding $230 billion ... and what's worst, the experts can't agree on what to do: http://www.robotspodcast.com/podcast/2009/02/robots-robot-ethics-part-1.html

Posted by: Johnny V | 2/13/09

@redbag

I agree, robots are a tool. A few things scare me, though: (1) They are new and clearly a complete game-changer, like the first tanks or planes. (2) They are coming in fast - when the US invaded Iraq in 2003 the number of ground robots was 0. Today we stand at 12'000 (!!!). (3) None of the previous new weapons have blurred the line between killing people and entertainment like this one. Soldiers in front of video screens, remote controlling these robots with gamepads praise this as an advantage because it makes robots easy to use. I think this is an enormous, but little discussed danger. Some interesting discussion here: http://www.robotspodcast.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=259

Posted by: Johnny V | 2/13/09

The next big thing

For those concerned about the ethical ramifications of robotic warfare, the following speculation may come across as crass - or even heartless. But for anyone wondering what the next big civil technological breakthrough will be (or how to profit from it), you need only read Singer's article to figure out. To put it bluntly...We are about to enter the First Great Age of the Robot. And Uncle Sam can take most of the credit. Despite what devoted free-marketeers may believe, the United States Government (or more specifically, its military-industrial component) has given us most of the cutting-edge technologies that have transformed the way we live and work. From the personal computer to the Internet and on to the GPS modules that now guide our morning commutes, our world has been revolutionized by what was first produced for the battlefield. Of course, governments have been doing this for quite a long time. Back in the Stone Age, the military requirement for more lethal spears and arrows is what probably propelled mankind into the Bronze Age. As the 19th Century gave way to the 20th, government investment in experimental biplanes paved the way for the establishment of a safe, reliable system of global transportation. With the possible exception of the automobile and the gas reciprocating engine, the same pattern of military-to-civil integration exists across a broad range of technologies. What is different - unprecedented - is the speed at which military technology translates into civil applications. When the first global positioning satellites were deployed in the 80's, a professor at the Naval War College predicted it would be 30 years before the military would allow civilians to benefit from pinpoint navigational accuracy. But by the mid 90's, most of my fellow boat owners in Cape May had a GPS system installed. After reading Singer's article, I am convinced that the current Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA)centered on robotics will spill over to the civilian sector with lightning speed. The unmanned terrain surveillance vehicle that costs $5000 will quickly transform into the riderless lawnmower coming in at under $500. Likewise, the tiny "nanobug" that can fly around a bunker housing insurgents will soon be deployed from people's cars - to let them know whether they should take the Interstate or the backroads. Since transformative technologies have a funny tendency of roaring on the scene following recessions (remember the Internet in 1992?), I forecast that these civil applications will begin to mushroom in just a couple of years. Look to the history books to cite 2011 as the official start of "I-Robot". So give Uncle Sam his due. For better and/or for worse, he is about to rock our world once again.

Posted by: Jack Whalen | 2/16/09

what are some things bad robots do?

what are some bad things bad robots do?

Posted by: scott | 4/5/09

woah!

man thats crazy stuff. just imagine, robots taking over the world.

Posted by: sally | 5/7/09

I wonder....

I wonder how those people feel when they get blown up by American jets or get shot by the troops.

Posted by: Saif | 6/1/09

Inciting False Fears - Ignoring the Real Problems

The biggest question that everyone asks when talking about military machines is whether or not they will take over when they become intelligent. The fact is that machines will only do what we tell them to do. It is highly unlikely that any machine that we design for combat will lack a sense of emotions and ego. A machine does not fear death unless programmed, does not fear unless programmed, and does not care unless programmed. They will be intelligent, but even if we make a mistake and develop one that would want to rise against its creators, the majority of the machines under our arsenal will not, so it won't pose a very significant threat. The machines will be designed to operated under the command of the troops it accompanies, and not under the command of a central artificial intelligence like in the Terminator movies. It would take significant effort to design a machine that willingly rises up against it's masters, and I really don't think we're going to go that direction. In my opinion, the main concern is environmental damage. When we do reach the point where we decide that machines can completely replace human soldiers, there will be a lot more units on the battlefield, and therefore a lot more waste. In a war fought between two nations capable of producing a formidable number of fighting machines, the amount of waste will be exponentially multiplied. The test of a nation's military might will be solely determined by their capability to produce more war machines. It will be the next arms race. While the human cost will be significantly reduced, the environmental cost could eventually be comparable to that of a small nuclear war.

Posted by: John | 9/16/09

robots

one thing is for sure is that if we use robots in this war,we would win this stupid war.one of my sisters fiance is in the war,and this war would end with a nuclear war,or not that much population.this robot idea would probably win this war or the other countries away from us would find out our secret,then win the war.theres no reason to win or lose.

Posted by: pollie | 4/15/10

Robots have the right to kill?

I cannot support ANY unguided robot with the right to kill. All robots should be directly controlled in Real Time and we should have legislation that limits Robots right to Kill without guided operators. China plans on having Robotic Police officers. How hard will it be for China to Continue Communism with an Unlimited Police Force with no Morals or Ethics that blindly follow orders?

Posted by: Raymond Rose | 5/13/10

Into the Unknown

The wave of change is not a surfer's roaring, crashing foam No, like the tide it rises slow, in gentle lapping tones Until the past is washed away, the water returns home And live begins again--alone... No one can know where this transformation will lead, but one thing is sure--our fears, joys, doubts and dreams, our thousand year old ethics and beliefs--will be overtaken by this wave of change, and what little remains will become part of a new reality. Ask an ancient Egyptian rolling stones onto the great pyramid how the wheel will change society...

Posted by: Rick C | 7/10/10

WOW

this is soooo amazing that robots are beginning 2 fill in 4 humans i think this will really help.

Posted by: Hayley | 10/5/10

it is so cool

Posted by: j765 | 10/14/10

technology

this is a very long passage but yet very interesting

Posted by: shanika | 10/20/10

stupid people

People have to stop thinking of themselves as separate from the rest of the world. Anything we do to the world, we are also effected by. If we bomb a nation's water supply, yeah, no one was killed. But many people still die because of our bombs. This doesn't take away ANY of the moral choices away from war. "If a man finds that his neighbors are starving, it will not be long before he himself is starving"

Posted by: Greg | 12/3/10

No Fate

For the purposes of combat, there is no need to program machines with emotions or anything that simulates emotions. An artificial intelligence designed to defend a military infrastructure could do some unintended killing. Oh, wait .... Skynet. Of course, that was *just* a movie.

Posted by: John | 1/16/11

Robots At War

Of course I didn't know anything like this exist until I saw the movie "The Hurt Locker" and there you meet there robot that they send in first when they have a suspected IED. I forget the robot's name in the movie. However, the big however, as a mother of young sons I (obviously) would pay my last cent to send in a robot as opposed to my son. Thanks for the article lengthy but thought provoking.

Posted by: Freedom iq | 2/9/11

Say goodbye to the air superiority fighter

This is the biggest loss of the use of drones on the battlefield: the air superiority fighter. AKA fighter jets (manned fighter jets, that is). The air superiority fighter has dominated the air battlefield since WWI. These guys are heros, like astronauts, and drone aircraft is phasing these guys out. The next few years may be the last of training fighter pilots. What a shame :( but life must evolve and go on.

Posted by: greenmanufacturingpurdue | 2/9/11

i read this article for a high school paper and i thought great and reminded me how bad things are .

Posted by: TJ | 3/4/11

why

if they wanted to create somthing so great then why complain about how much that they have to pay? if thet dident want to do it then they couldent... plus what do we need robots for anyway they arent dpind nothing but getting in our way anyway thats just the way i see it robots in this catagory are not porhapitted at this point at all.. For example, say if right in the middle of war a Robot shuts down and a soilder has to run out in the middle of the battlefild and fix it... that rite threr tells u that they are no good and the government only wanting money is just taking and not giving>>> (ETC..)

Posted by: kaitlyn | 3/8/11

Air Flight 655

The Air Flight 655 shootdown was *not* the result of robotics/automation, but rather human error in many regards. Otherwise, good article.

Posted by: JoeOvercoat | 3/10/11

no place to hide

The emerging importance of robotics in war is obvious. This means the greatest industrial countries will dominate in the future of conventional warfare (because nukes is all out). This puts countries like China in an advantageous position now, or in the near future. I've been thinking about the implications of technologies such as predator drones and the like. Technology is actively advancing the predator in all fronts, including miniaturization, "predator swarms", and completely autonomous predator assassins, to name a few. As a result, my thoughts have radically shifted. I now beleive that it is important for the human race to allow at least some sanctuary, even for our enemies. If we don't, I fear the technology will ultimately fall into the hands of the worst of our species, and there will be no hiding.

Posted by: Eric Olsen | 11/21/11