--- Mike Carrell wrote: > And what is the 'authority' for the 'priority' of autonomous weapons? Or does the author mean booby traps and land mines?
... well, there's the rub, and his point may well be that this endeavor is far too unsupervised now (no taxpayer oversight)... and will likely become a very "slippery slope" if there is any modicum of success. Perhaps the public should think about intervening before it is too late. We will have that opportunity in November. It is pretty clear that McCain represents "stay the course" or even an expanded Military, and that the other party will massively cut the defense budget (even if they say otherwise now). Both of these courses are risky, but which is less-risky? Already we cannot muster enough human troops for Iraq and if the advance robotics are even partially successful there, and can ease the manpower problems, then the Pentagon's increased 'push' to make them even more capable (intelligent), and numerous, is fraught with unknown risks. .... because even when many layers of precautions are taken, and to the degree that any smart weapon is made even more capable, there can be no assurance that any such intelligent device cannot become "self-aware" of its intended purpose, and intervene somehow. This is kind of like 'Hal' and the Clarke dilemma in 2001. For instance, we know that our own Military, long before teraflop computing became affordable, trained dogs and sea-mammals to kill the enemy. Dolphins have been strapped with all kinds of weapons, but few were ever sacrificed. If (under different circumstances) this intelligent creature had been used by us in War, and had been killed in significant numbers, would that kind of "information" get back to other dolphins? ... or would any "guilt" attach? Don't laugh yet. Certainly there are reasons to suspect that dolphins have the mentality necessary to feel remorse for their actions or to anticipate their fate; but could enough "contrarian" discretion emerge to overcome an extended training regimen ?... IOW can they overcome what they had been taught for a "higher" self-aware purpose? Would they ever "turn" on the trainer? I believe that there is more than a remote possibility that this could happen; but I am pretty sure that the "remorse" consideration never entered into whatever decision was made at the Pentagon. For all we know, this kind of activity is still going on in secret. Heck, maybe those pesky dolphins are the nefarious ones who cut all those underwater communications cables in the Mid-East ;-) BTW- some sources claim that as many as eight cables were cut that week! ... but other "experts" so the spin goes, say that this occurs all the time. "Cable cuts happen on average once every three days," one expert reportedly said. "There are 25 large ships that do nothing but fix cable cuts and bends..." While any severed cable is a "cut" in the parlance of telecom, most often they're the result of cables rubbing against sea floor rocks, eventually cutting through the copper shielding and exposing the thin fiber optics inside. Riiiiight... well, once again, not sure who to believe- ...but isn't that exactly how the spin-doctors like to leave things ? Jones
