Beware uprising of robotic spies

[humble3d]

Beware uprising of robotic spies

Forget killer robots, we should be worrying about robotic SPIES:

US military's top AI expert says protecting privacy is our biggest concern

Comment made by Gill Pratt, manager for the Darpa Robotics Challenge

‘How do we protect the information that the robot picks up?’ he asks

He claims, today, there is too much trust in the software used in devices

But he doesn't believe we should ban development of robotic weapons

One of the US military’s top scientists claims it isn’t killer robots we

need to worry about, but an uprising of robotic spies

Gill Pratt, the program manager for the Darpa Robotics Challenge, recently

told Defense One that banning autonomous weapons was wrong.

Our focus should instead be on protecting intelligence, he said.

‘The danger is not in the legs. It’s in the camera and the microphone,’ said

Pratt. ‘How do we protect the information that the robot picks up?’

In the future, Pratt envisions robots doing everything from helping the

elderly at home, carrying our backpacks on a hike and aiding in disaster

recovery operations.

‘I’d love to have a machine help me when I grow old, he said, in an in-depth

interview with Defence One. ‘But I don’t want all the information, all that

the robot is watching, to be made public.

‘How do we protect against that? I don’t know. ‘These are serious questions,

but they aren’t specific to the robotics field. They’re specific to IT.’

He claims, today, there is too much trust in the software used in devices

such as mobile phones.

His point was proven last year when experts found gyroscopes on mobile can

be turned into crude microphones that can pick up on phone conversations

with the aid of specialist software.

‘I don’t worry about the robot on the loose doing physical damage.

'The valuable stuff is the data. That issue is huge and transcends whether

it’s a robot, a cellphone, or a laptop.’

Earlier in the summer, Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking, signed a letter urging

governments to ban the development of autonomous weapons.

The letter warned that 'autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of

tomorrow'.

The experts point out that, unlike nuclear weapons, AI weapons require no

costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials.

This means they will become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant

military powers to mass-produce.

'If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a

global arms race is virtually inevitable,'the letter states.

'Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations,

destabilising nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a

particular ethnic group,' the letter states.

'We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial

for humanity.'

But Pratt believes now is the wrong time to be making this decision. He said

first we need to understand what’s possible, before deciding to ban them.

‘In the case of lethal autonomy, we need to learn a whole lot more and

there’s a whole of good that they can do, too, in stopping lethal errors

from happening,’ he added.

Earlier this month, footage emerged of a seemingly lethal home-made drone

opening fire in the woods.

The demonstration video, apparently made by a teenager in Connecticut, shows

a robotic device with four rotor engines firing four shots in succession.

Each time the handgun is fired, the drone is knocked back some distance, but

remains stable enough to discharge a bullet once every three seconds.

The 14-second clip appears to be the work of Austin Haughwout, an 18-year-

old from Clinton, Connecticut.

He entitled the video 'Flying Gun', and wrote the following description

underneath: 'Homemade multirotor with a semiautomatic handgun mounted on it.

'Note: The length from the muzzle to the rear of the frame is over 26'.'

Both handguns and this type of drone device are widely available in the

United States. The drone appears to have been equipped with a mechanism to

pull the trigger on command.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3218997/Forget-killer-robots-worrying-robotic-SPIES-military-s-AI-expert-says-protecting-privacy-biggest-concern.html

[OrbingStorm]

Ever science fiction movie I ever saw is coming true lately :P :P