It may not be a floating basketball-sized ancilla with the capability to nuke you with it’s third eye, but the X-47B unmanned aircraft seen in this image has the capacity to fly a mission with no help from man.
Other robotic creations have been developed to identify and engage targets with missiles, and go on reconnaissance and intelligence gathering missions, mapping out the inside of structures and reporting how many warm bodies are housed within them.
The concept is even being worked on to create an “ethical governor”, to guide robot warriors in their decision making when exterminating a human-being.
Sound like a futuristic sci-fi movie? Or, back to that ancilla encased in the basketball, what happens when ‘Mendicant Bias’ gets in conflict with it’s orders and starts harming those it was programmed to serve? These are no longer questions for movie plots, but realities facing scientists and governments of the world today.
Even scarier and closer to home: a small drone, those unmanned super-secret spy and combat air vehicles that were only available to the governments of the world, are now available to the public for a few hundred dollars. How much easier will it be in the near future for that crazy cheerleader mom to sick an automated kill machine on her daughter’s rival – – robots won’t grow a conscience and tattle! Unless someone writes a conscience virus…
Of course the use of Robot Warriors could save lives and prevent the trauma of Post Traumatic Stress on war survivors. But as each country develops these unconscious killers, the game of war will change in a myriad of ways, potentially ending in bigger disasters.
Instead, perhaps we will learn from our worst sci-fi nightmares and strive for the more meaningful existences, the more fulfilling of the futuristic sci-fi visions.
One can only hope.
~CHa0s
Source: BBC News Magazine