The Nightmare of Killer Robots Is Here

It is frightening to realize that our own version of the clone wars from Star Wars may be closer to reality than any of us care to think. This story (http://www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=080227111811.y9syyq8p&show_article=1) describes how robots are being designed to fight in battles and may in time become autonomous. This is science fiction come to life in nightmare form. How long until these weapons fall into the wrong hands or - God forbid - go out of control and perhaps kill innocent people? Sadly, why is it that I suspect that Emperor Palpatine Dick Cheney probably thinks this is a wonderful development? Here are some story highlights:

Increasingly autonomous, gun-totting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP. "They pose a threat to humanity," said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain's Royal United Services Institute. Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world -- from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones -- can already identify and lock onto targets without human help. There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.

Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield. South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots. Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defense's Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December. James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey. Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. "I don't know why that has not happened already," he said. But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines. "I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me," Sharkey said.