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witch hunt against robots

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Admin:
from the article:

"Friday, March 2, will be a day of civil disobedience and direct action against the war machine in Pittsburgh. The main action will be an attempt to barricade the National Robotics Engineering Center, a branch of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) that develops robotic vehicles and weapons delivery systems for the U.S. Army and Marines."

ok so it isnt really a witch hunt, but more a protest against military research . . .

but it could be a precursor to a robot witchhunt . . . interesting that its probably the first protest against robot development, and that its located near CMU . . .

http://organizepittsburgh.org/m2/

if anyone gets more info (pics, video, etc.) please post!!!

and more from the article:
"Why CMU and NREC? CMU is one of the largest academic military contractors in the country. Many of the software guidance systems, general communications networking systems, and some of the robotics technology used in Iraq were developed at CMU. And through the efforts of its National Robotics Engineering Center (NREC) -- which receives most of its funding from the Pentagon -- it has become the world leader in warfare robotics. Among other monstrosities, it is building is the "Gladiator" Tactical Unmanned Ground Vehicle, a remote controlled robo-tank designed for urban warfare."

Admin:
reading further into it, it appears their entire protest is misguided by a total lack of knowledge of how battlefield robots operate:

"... when robots make decisions about who can and should be killed we remove the last vestiges of humanity in the battlefield. However intelligent an AI system like Gladiator might be, it clearly lacks the ability to make moral judgments."

(from this 'fact sheet' http://www.organizepittsburgh.org/flyers/cmu_factsheet.pdf)
 . . . but all these robots are remote controlled by a human operator . . .

Plus, as a member of the CMU robotics community, I know for a fact that CMU doesnt have "a mindset that glorifies military power, hardware and technology as its primary problem-solving tools." The robotics institute has an overwhelming majority of civilian use research, and students know what they are working on (duh).

(ok, so maybe i took this too personally . . . :P)

dunk:
yes, it sort of highlights the sad thing about our hobby.
most of the funding comes from military sources.

i have visited too many countries where more technologically advanced governments have used technology against the people's best interest.

while it may be inevitable with the march of technology it's sad this is the driving force behind the robotics industry.

dunk.

hgordon:
I think it's legit that folks are trying to raise awareness of the path we're headed down in enabling autonomous agents to kill people by attaching weapons to them, though I personally don't know how we will avoid the inevitability of this occurrence.  I fully support the efforts (funded by military) to develop bomb disposal, mine detection, rescue, and even remote monitoring technologies, but when I see the videos of UAV's with weapons carrying live ammo, I get a really sick feeling.  Perhaps there's a line that can be drawn, though no doubt, someone will cross it.

Admin:
being a robotics researcher for the Navy, i think about this a lot . . . my current project would save lives . . . but the line is blurred with dual use technology . . .

history is riddled with inventions meant for the military, and then used for the better of mankind . . .

a few examples off the top of my head:
rockets
satelites
nuclear power/fusion/fission
jet aircraft
internet <= yes, the freakin' internet was military research! :P
submarines
metal hull ships

many of these projects would have failed without government funding. robots will be no exception. its all doubled edged technology . . .

I just heard from an acquaintance of mine that "All of 5 people showed up with big signs for this last summer." :P

a lot of japanese anime has people in the future attacking robots like some form of twisted racism . . . perhaps this is the beginning . . .

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