Wednesday, February 16, 2005

Incredible article, ridiculous quote...

New robotic soldiers WILL have large role in US military in next ten years. Of course, this leads the NY Times to search for a lunatic to quote. Enter Bill Joy (Sun Microsystems co-founder):

21st-century robotics and nanotechnology may become "so powerful that they
can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses...As machines become more
intelligent, people will let machines make more of their decisions for them,"
Mr. Joy wrote recently in Wired magazine. "Eventually a stage may be reached at
which the decisions necessary to keep the system running will be so complex that
human beings will be incapable of making them intelligently. At that stage, the
machines will be in effective control."

Did he steal that from Terminator? Come on, that has to be a Terminator quote..."the machines will be in effective control!" We Must destroy Skynet!!

I am always curious as to why the scientists are so bent on making the robots appear human-like. Personally, I liked this idea:
Robots in battle, as envisioned by their builders, may look and move
like..hummingbirds, tractors or tanks, cockroaches or crickets. With the
development of nanotechnology - the science of very small structures - they may
become swarms of "smart dust."

Seriously, a swarm of "smart dust" nano robots at our disposal...slip a squadron into a Mid East dust storm and "adios Ayatollah!"