AI goes wild: Slaughterbots

[AdamG]

From the DailyWail

...a report last week sounded alarm bells over the implications of rapidly improving artificial intelligence.
The study, from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) warns of thousands of jobs being lost to robots – with those on lowest wages likely to be hardest hit.
Around 44% of jobs accounting for about £290 million in wages risk being automated in the coming decades – mostly in low-paid sectors such as call centres, offices and factories.
Mathew Lawrence, a senior researcher at the IPPR, said: “Managed badly, the benefits of automation could be narrowly concentrated, benefiting those who own capital. Inequality would spiral.”

https://www.sundaypost.com/fp/planet...seize-control/

SKYNET is pleased...

[AdamG]

Reading music https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Cwi0pkhoSE

Killer robots have been a staple of TV and movies for decades, from Westworld to The Terminator series. But in the real world, killer robots are officially known as "autonomous weapons."

At the Pentagon, Paul Scharre helped create the U.S. policy for such weapons. In his new book, Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, Scharre discusses the state of these weapons today.

https://www.npr.org/sections/alltech...without-humans

Drone swarms. Self-driving tanks. Autonomous sentry guns. Sometimes it seems like the future of warfare arrived on our doorstep overnight, and we’ve all been caught unprepared. But as Paul Scharre writes in his new book Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, this has been a long time coming, and we’re currently the slow culmination of decades of development in military technology. That doesn’t mean it’s not scary, though.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/24/1...w-army-of-none

System hack? Unpossible! It could never happen to us...

[Bill Moore]

Terrorists Are Going to Use Artificial Intelligence

https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/201...seone_today_nl

Max Tegmark’s book Life 3.0 notes the concern of UC Berkeley computer scientist Stuart Russell, who worries that the biggest winners from an AI arms race would be “small rogue states and non-state actors such as terrorists” who can access these weapons through the black market. Tegmark writes that after they are “mass-produced, small AI-powered killer drones are likely to cost little more than a smartphone.” Would-be assassins could simply “upload their target’s photo and address into the killer drone: it can then fly to the destination, identify and eliminate the person, and self-destruct to ensure that nobody knows who was responsible.”

Thinking beyond trigger-pulling, artificial intelligence could boost a wide range of violent non-state actors’ criminal activities, including extortion and kidnapping, through the automation of social engineering attacks

.

Also discusses using it to social profile, and how criminals will employ it. The future is unknown, so we must think about a range of potential futures and how that should shape how we design future security forces.

[Bill Moore]

This book looks promising. AI is a reality, so we need to have the hard discussions and debates on how it will shape the character and even the nature of war if you take the human out of the loop. Hard for long term professionals to envision a future where fighter pilots, submarine skippers, and special operators increasingly lose relevance, but that ridge line is rapidly approaching. Furthermore, the U.S. and its partners won't define the future of AI alone, even non-state actors will shape its future.

https://techcrunch-com.cdn.ampprojec...s-warfare/amp/

In Army of None, a field guide to the coming world of autonomous warfare

ll that said, Army of None is a one-stop guide book to the debates, the challenges, and yes, the opportunities that can come from autonomous warfare. Scharre ends on exactly the right note, reminding us that ultimately, all of these machines are owned by us, and what we choose to build is within our control. “The world we are creating is one that will have intelligent machines in it, but it is not for them. It is a world for us.” We should continue to engage, and petition, and debate, but always with a vision for the future we want to realize.

[AdamG]

China’s brightest children are being recruited to develop AI ‘killer bots’
Beijing Institute of Technology recruits 31 ‘patriotic’ youngsters for new AI weapons development programme
Expert in international science policy describes course as ‘extremely powerful and troubling’

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/scie...elop-ai-killer

[AdamG]

Double-tapping this nightmare. Sweet dreams, y'all.

https://dcdirtylaundry.com/surgical-...sipped-lattes/

(Natural News) In the name of scientific “progress,” Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital in the United Kingdom recently tried to pioneer the use of a surgical robot that it tasked with repairing a patient’s damaged heart valve, only to have the machine go completely bonkers and ultimately kill the man on the operating table.

According to reports, this first-time-use robot not only physically assaulted a living medic while attempting to conduct its programmed surgery, but also implanted stitches into the patient’s heart in a manner that physicians present during the fiasco described as not being in “an organised fashion.”

A situation that can only be described as total chaos, with human surgeons, doctors, and nurses having to scream at each other in order to overcome the “tinny” sound coming from the robot as they were trying to control it, the attempted surgery ended up being nothing short of a complete failure. And in the end, retired music teacher and conductor, Stephen Pettitt, the guinea pig patient in this medical experiment, ultimately lost his life.

[davidbfpo]

I was puzzled at now spotting this story in the UK media and on looking there are a number of reports. First this has become public as thee is a coroners inquest underway and second the actual death was in March 2015 - 3.5yrs ago (the operation was in February 2015). That is a long time to wait for an inquest (not that far more political and contentious matters can wait a very long time for an inquest).

The inquest's final BBC report:https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-tyne-46143940

This linked article has a video advert for the robot:https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6363243/Pioneering-robot-KNOCKED-medics-hand-middle-heart-operation.html