Pentagon to build 'ethical' robot soldiers

I wonder if they'll be deployed to fight dinosaurs?? If we don't fight 'em over there, we'll have to fight 'em over here, you know. Before you readers say I'm crazy, I'm alluding to DC Comics' STAR SPANGLED WAR STORIES, which was popular when I was a kid. There, the Army used android-type robots. One, named Joe, would obey vocal commands from his/its human partner. They were stationed in the Pacific, so they had to fight the Japanese as well as the dinosaurs. The other, named Jake, in the same comic, i believe, but later, just fought the Japanese. Art imitates life imitates art.

There are two problems with this:
1) They don't really know what will happen when they deploy these things
2) Although I'm in favor of getting humans off the battlefield. I'm afraid that using robots will make it a lot easier to go to war.

Ethical? So a whole bunch of robots are going to be programmed with American ethics? With all this bull floating around I'm wondering if its worth thinking to live past 40.

Since when can a machine be ethical? Is it in the same way a bomb can be smart? Oh, I get it, only unethical guns kill people.

Typo...Title was supposed to be 'Robots to build ethical Pentagon'.

don't agree with this because it is unnecessary. we do not need to improve on war or how to kill better. we do not need more machines like this. & the money can be used for something else. I hope current pres. elect & team are prepared to question this type of project firmly. they have to solve little problems first before strating on this type of thing. similar to spending billions for space projects when most of the problems on earth are not solved. that wuld create problems continuing even if we go to space. point: so before building robot soldiers, we need to spend money to solve problem of war & to not have war. Then we should get to vote on it & the vote should be a lound NO!

They cannot judge truly, this is not a solution by looking at all sides, it is a quick fix and in addition waste of space & precious metals. is it fair to have robot soldiers fight human soldiers of 'enemies'?--a big sympathy for other side cause humans identify with humans. OR is the nex thing robots fighting each other.
then it is easy!
Warmongers, why don't you all get together and play a war video game- world of warcraft perhaps or
Call of Duty modern warfare wuld be right up yr alley.

Play nice :-P

bullshitbullshitbullshit

am i the only one who remembers Terminator and I Robot.

Make them 3-Laws safe with a human kill-authorization system and we won't have any "rise of the machines" problems.

great so now america can do all the killing from the comfort of their own couch. you wil seenew soldiers and fresh troops operating these things like videogames.

you mean robots that're more ethical than some of the troops that're already on the ground? here's hoping, though coming from the Pentagon, I'll only believe it when I see it.. I guess at least robots shouldn't derive a sadistic pleasure from torture and humiliation...

Pentagon.....ethical....talk about an oxymoron....emphasis on the "moron" part. Our tax dollars at work, people! Hope they think to install Norton on those robocops....oh, WAIT. No one could hack into the Pentagon soldiers, right? OMG.....

So they would ignore Asimovs prime directives, thus putting the robot in the position of chosing between ethics and mission. Have they not seen what the result of this is in the movies-the anniliation of the annihilation of the human race!

mechwarrior!

...well, i hope they build more sophisticated ideas of what ethical means before they let killer robots loose into the world...

Yeah, ethical robots unless the person controlling them happens to be not-so ethical.

so what happens when the opposition brings an E.M.P.?
second wave of humans becomes the front wave

ethical is the key word.. im sure they will be built that way but allso they will leave room for attachments.. like big ass guns! yaaaa!

2 words come to mind. Terminator and Diebold.

I'm kinda scared that this could turn into an I Robot thing. All of a sudden the robots will go haywire and start killing people left and right and they wont be killing “ethically” anymore.

This is a pipe dream. As others have already posted, AI just isn't this far along yet. And for that matter if a robot makes a mistake, who will be held responsible? A smarter move would be remotely controlled "bots." Since this would remove the troops from the front line, it would provide an emotional disconnect. What motive does a professional soldier remotely controlling a robot have to commit war crimes? Problem solved.

imagine if we put that kind of money towards real and sustainable progress.

Robots will never be sophisticated enough to handle the delicate task of stacking POW's into naked pyramids and then ass raping them.

We will always needs humans (and a Republican President) in order to "ethically" ass rape our Prisoners of War.

No machine can replace that human touch!

And by the way, why are we giving billions to England, when the gov't subsidizes MIT for this very thing.

Japan makes robots that cook, and we're making robots to kill.

No American trust the government, which is why confidence levels are at an all time low.

The American gov't will use the robots to kill whatever they won't and then claim that it was a computer malfunction. Since the robots have no consciousness, much like the gov't, there will never be anyone charged for war crimes and no need for psychiatric therapy.

On the brighter side, thinks of all the American lives it will save.

Judgement day is coming...

Oh yeah, that's not gonna bite us in the ass later on.

The headline assumes making war is ethical. Who is going to program the ethical warrior? Are they to be modeled after the Trojans so the Generals can over ride the Ethics chip and still have plausible deniability?

This source makes me skeptical about it since we're looking too ahead of the future. Terminator 2 was just a movie.

if it wasn't hard enought to go to sleep know i have to think about this. the world minds could make a robot to help surgen, but in stead the goverment is using it money and power to make a robot that can kill on it own. then again anything that could save more of are soldiers life. i don't like this idea

Did you people not learned your lesson with robocop...machines can not make the right judment
specially if we are talking about life.

The Cylons created made by man.
They rebelled.
They evolved.
There are many copies.

AND THEY HAVE A PLAN.

The problem with going to war with robots is that , the human element is lost. And once the human element is lost, war truly just becomes a game for the one using the A.I. or robots.

Whose ethics are they going to use to determine the ethics of these robots? 'Cause my ethics probably ain't the same as that of the US gov't.

here's to the fucture.

More money, tax dollars I assume, wasted on murder & war.

So they will ethicly "put us down" like cats at the shelter??

HERE COMES THE REAL TERMINATOR!

The clone wars have begun

Well, do it quickly as the Chinese and other I'm sure already have this.

Impossible.

Sexy headline, but a robot can be neither ethical or unethical unless it has intelligence and a sense of self. Clearly the technology in Artificial Intelligence is not that far along. To be ethical implies the ability to make rational choices as well as belonging to some sort of community.

I don't think an autonomous system necessarily qualifies as an ethical agent.

Where's my microchip? Seriously!

That's scary, it's so much like Asimov's I Robot, except they obey the Geneva Convention, slightly more complex than the three laws...

Is an ethical robot that can kill really ethical?

This is the Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex in action.
It's also how we've developed most of our technology in general since WW2.
The high tech industry gets a Pentagon subsidy for research that will ultimately benefit the private sector.
We probably won't see any robot soldiers for a while, but corporations will have the technology to develop better artificial intelligence for consumers.

Sound like a story line from the great Fallout games, namely Fallout 3 were we nuke out world and then all it's left is robots, humans (infrected), and super mutants, a ethical robot, doubtful.

Making robot killing machines is what
our armed forces do best. Just now we
do it without humans. Do robots suffer
from p.t.s.d. or just the programmers?

Where am I going and why am I in this hand basket?

Transformers!! Ethical Robot soldiers in disguise.

If they are ethical i don't see them working for the government very long

Isn't that the premise behind the original "The Day The Earth Stood Still"?

Ethics for military robots? What happens if the general (or whoever) wants the robot to do something that is in violation of the ethics rules it has been programed with? Is there an over ride for the military higher ups? As humans we aren't always going to be ethical so having a human oversee these robots will cause problems. Well it'll cause problems if and when something like this actually gets released.

LOL, talk about putting the cart before the horse. They might want to spend some of that trillion-dollar Pentagon budget on creating "robot soldiers" that don't resemble tinker-toy go-carts with cameras and machine-guns slapped on top with duct tape and baling wire. Whenever people talk about "robot soldiers" I always think of the Robin Williams movie "Toys".

Small steps, army guys...gotta take the small steps...

On another note, I think we should start ensuring that iPhones are programmed with the Three Laws of Robotics...can never be too careful.

Hmm... It's like my cartoons are coming to life... Anyway, I agree with the couple posts in regards to the question of what is it that the Pentagon considers ethical.

Robots are only as ethical as their owners make them. I'm sure they're also imagining that since robot soldiers aren't humans they don't count if they're used to violate human rights.

WAHLAO THIS IS SICK AWESOMECAKES!!!

GUNDAM!