Seapower is the official magazine of the Navy League but under the direction of Richard Barnard, Peter Atkinson, and Rick Burgess in recent years it has also emerged as a great source of future tech news and information.
The May issue of Seapower is no exception. Among features on micro air vehicles and new uses for fighter targeting pods is a cover story about the merging of man and robot to fight the wars of the not-so-distant future.
In the story, titled “New Era,” Seapower correspondent Roxana Tiron writes about how “scientists foresee the merger of man and machine capabilities, enabling creation of robots to fight side-by-side with humans.” She goes on to suggest that “advances in biomimetrics will help scientists imitate organic life, fostering machine intelligence approaching human speed by 2040.”
“Robots will be used routinely in the most dangerous missions,” said Stephen DeAntonio, business development director at Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center. “They will be fully autonomous with sophisticated behaviors and will be part of full-fledged networks where the is credible information sharing among ground robots, air vehicles and humans.”
The article also mentions the notion that fast-acting robots could take over when odds favor enemy forces.
Can’t you just see the headlines circa 2040? “General charged with waiting too long to commit robots,” or “Soldiers complain that robots stole taste of victory.”
(Update, 1200 EDT): And of course no Robot/Human article would be complete without running the “I Robot” scenario to ground.
“It is imperative for robots to become part of the command structure,” said Thomas McKenna, director of ONR’s Sciences Division. “Why should be build expensive wild beasts?“
Can you say “Robo Berzerker”? Sounds kind of cool, actually.
Check out the entire May issue of Seapower here.
(Photo: “Robolobster,” developed by Northwestern’s Marine Science Center for naval reconnaissance and surveillance, mine detection, and search and rescue.)
– Ward
(Again I appologize for the video game referance.)
But, is this supposed to be like that litte robot thinger that cuts through doors and whatnot on “Gears Of War”?
–BBS
…or perhaps like that little sentry bot thing on DOOM3?
–BBS
The article mentions robotic intelligence approaching human speed by 2040, but fails to consider the implications of that. Does the writer believe that machines will reach human intellegence then stop, as if human intelligence was the absolute limit?
Once a machine reaches human-level intelligence it is only a matter of time — a very short time — until it exceeds human intelligence. Will we be able to control machines that are smarter than we are? Will artifical intelligence be “friendly” to humans? How likely is that if it evolved from military combat systems?
We must address the problem of creatinging “friendly” AI right now, at every level of development, or we may find ourselves in a very unpleasent situation. This is a public safety issue, perhaps a few decades in the future, that we need to consider now.
Goto http://www.singinst.org for more on this.
They’re never going to get to human level intelligence. Well, I suppose that also depends on which humans you’re talking about. They might get computers to the level of “McDonalds Employee”, but nothing approaching true sentience.
We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to our own. Your culture will adapt to service us. Resistance is futile
anyone that doesn’t think Machines will ever be smarter than humans just doesn’t follow tech at all. If he follow the currently plotted history of advancement starting with about 1900 and electromechanical devices and follow it through to 2005 we find a nice clean arch that quickly moves us. At this rate by 2030 a CPU with more processing power than a human will cost about $1 and by 2045 a CPU with as much processing power as every person on the planet will cost about $1.
The tricks is that CPU power is not the whole pictures, software is the other half and we are only begining to understand how the human brain thinks. However as CPU costs go down and speed goes up we are more and more likley to see machines building their own upgrades and code advancements. We are already seeing that today. Shortly after that the age of Man will end.
Don’t get me wrong there is no reason to believe they would just kill us all off any more than you are likley to kill all the neighborhood cats or more to the point you own grandparents. But they will think better and faster than us and we will become the 2nd class thinkers on the plant.
My big hope is that they take care of us all like I do my cats. They get anything they want…:)
2nd post:
If this stuff is exciting to you, start with reading this wiki bit. Gives you an idea of what we are up against.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_singularity
You took your cats to be neutered, didn’t you?
If you look at any sort of tech advances in modern history, they advance very quickly right up until they get “good enough”, and then they stop. Look at aviation, space exploration, nuclear power, automobiles, guns, or anything else. Major advances followed by a long period of stagnation.
Computer advances are driven by the market, which is fueled by nerds who want faster and faster video games. Eventually, the market support won’t be there — the systems will be fast enough, and once that realization sinks in, computer research will trail off. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the PS3.