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DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

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Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#91
post #15
post #13

Terminator has always been one of my favorite movies, and reality has an uncanny way of getting us closer and closer to the fantasy. We justify this new technology in the same way - "it's for our protection"! Dictators run into trouble when the armies decide they won't attack a local population because, hey, it's their families and friends we're talking about. Robots eliminate that pesky detail. Imagine how a secessi…

Isn't this a nuclear weapon vs nuclear power type issue? We'll always have the capacity for evil, I'd expect an international ban on the use of robotic soliders after some period of mass destruction (we'll still have them sitting in a bunker just in case)

The difference is that nuclear weapons are indiscriminate, whereas robotic soldiers can theoretically limit targets only to evildoers (or dissidents, undesirables, etc).

Re: DARPA and Boston Dynamics unveil a new humanoid robot

#92
post #31

We really need to ratify and institute Isaac Asimov's 3 Laws of Robotics ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics ) otherwise I'm afraid our future selves will regret it.

The three laws worked really well as a literary device exactly because they are completely inadequate as an design / engineering / ethical tool. The stories are about the problems caused by the three laws, and how interesting they are. No one who has thought about it a bit, and certainly not Asimov, would seriously recommend them as an engineering solution.

Moreover, he sidestepped misuse of the tech by claiming that the Laws were "hard-wired" into the design of the positronic brain. Not only could be the Laws not be over-written, it was literally impossible in Asimov's universe to create a robot that was without them.

In real life, we know how trivial it would be to completely overwrite the operating system with arbritary software.

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