A blog and nothing but since 2003. Some tech, lots of music, and if rambling was money, drinks are on me.
Scary thoughts about robots
My brain wandered off this morning (as my brain tends to do) and when I found it again, it was thinking about robot drone planes for some odd reason. In an effort to get my brain back to the things it was supposed to be thinking about, we thought it through a little bit.
The US Military has been using robot drone planes for a little while now, and there’s a certain part of me (specifically, the 9-year-old who had a toy chest full of Star Wars toys) that thinks this is–not to put too fine a point on it–totally fucking awesome. I mean, robot planes? That is so cool.
But then there’s the adult part of me, the part that saw a bit on the cable TV on fighter planes that said that the only restriction on planes going faster is that the human pilots are unable to withstand the pressure, that gets at least unnerved if not downright and outright scared by the development. What will happen to warfare if the possibility of your own troops dying–one of the chief reasons that even the most hardened hawks will hesitate to go to war–is removed?
Then there’s the second amendment. If not a full believer of the second amendment, I am at least an understander of its chief aim, which is to make the government afraid of the people, at least enough so that they won’t attempt to use the military to keep the public from their rights. But the more robotic the military becomes, the more difficult it would be for an armed public to take control away from the government.
These are just a few of the thoughts that keep my brain and I busy in idle moments. Your thoughts–especially those of Hans, aka “Mr. I Love Articles About Robots”–are welcome.
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June 24th, 2008 at 1:26 am
“What will happen to warfare if the possibility of your own troops dying–one of the chief reasons that even the most hardened hawks will hesitate to go to war–is removed?”
The current ‘wars’ in which the US is engaged in are already clearly one-sided in terms of casualties. I suppose it’s an interesting thought, though. Once you start using robot drones even the pretense of risk and noble sacrifice gets thrown out the window.
June 24th, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Actually, this post has got me thinking a lot more about the second amendment than about robots. I think the whole defending-ourselves-against-the-government argument became moot a long time before robotic planes. On the other hand, shootin’s fun. I owned a gun once, it made me feel a little wierd, but I’ve been considering getting one again.
As for robots, this isn’t exactly relevant to the topic at hand, but I totally think I could whip this thing.
June 24th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
Thomas: Everyone–government, military and people–are mostly only concerned with the casualties on their own side. Even going back to the American Revolution and WWII, the government had a difficult time keeping the pubic in support of the war once they started seeing the casualties come in. It’s frustrating that so many people don’t make the connection between “we should go to war” and “people we know will die”, but they don’t.
The US public support for Iraq was massive before it happened and remained that way, but then the US casualties not only started happening more, but for a longer and longer time. So just imagine what the public support would be like if no one had to get anxious as they heard about someone being assigned to Iraq, or if there were never headlines in the papers that said “8 US Troops Killed”. It’s a small number, but it starts having a huge effect, and if it was only about the money being spent? I shudder to think what could happen to warfare, not just with the US Military, but anywhere. Their own human toll will no longer be a factor.
Hans, I disagree. I think that, no matter how one-sided the armament advantage, humans fighting humans is still a winnable war. Many revolutions have been won with a massive disadvantage.
But when you have human beings fighting for the military, you still have the human emotions of fear and self-preservation coming into play. Remove those and it’s much, much harder for humans to battle against something that will push forward no matter what, having no sense of loss or regret.
June 24th, 2008 at 2:01 pm
What did you do with your gun, Hans? Sell it to a robot?
June 24th, 2008 at 2:21 pm
I think he did, if I remember right. And the robot had sold its trigger finger to buy Hans some bullets. Real Gift of the Magi stuff.
June 24th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I hear you on the fear and self-preservation thing, but a bunch of guys with arsenals in the Montana mountains are still not any king of match for the US military’s F-15’s and tanks and such, even if those machines are filled with puny, frightened hu-mans.
June 24th, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Dude, all you have to do is get some robot insurance from Old Glory. Then you’ll be able to sleep better.
June 25th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
Well as long as the 2nd amendment lets us buy our own robot planes and robot guns, then maybe it would still be a fair fight.
June 29th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
I just read a podcast about how robot planes are going to be used to study hurricanes. They can go into the center of the storm and not put life at risk, and because they are made of neoprene and kevlar, they are pretty indestructible (maybe that’s not a good thing, in the case of war robots.