Mitch McConnell’s new intern
Due to technological revolutions outside its control, the Department of Defense (DoD) anticipates the dawn of a bold new era of automated war within just 15 years. By then, they believe, wars could be fought entirely using intelligent robotic systems armed with advanced weapons.
So, they may as well help it along. Right?
Last week, US defense secretary Chuck Hagel announced the ‘Defense Innovation Initiative’—a sweeping plan to identify and develop cutting edge technology breakthroughs “over the next three to five years and beyond” to maintain global US “military-technological superiority.” Areas to be covered by the DoD programme include robotics, autonomous systems, miniaturization, Big Data and advanced manufacturing, including 3D printing…
The Pentagon plans to monopolize imminent “transformational advances” in nanotechnology, robotics, and energy…
Pointing out that “sensitive personal information” can now be easily mined from online sources and social media, they call for policies on “Personally Identifiable Information (PII) to determine the Department’s ability to make use of information from social media in domestic contingencies”—in other words, to determine under what conditions the Pentagon can use private information on American citizens obtained via data-mining of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and so on.
Just in case the NSA missed anything.
Yet the most direct military application of such technologies, the Pentagon study concludes, will be in “Command-Control-Communications, Computers and Intelligence-Surveillance-Reconnaissance (C4ISR)”—a field led by “world-class organizations such as the National Security Agency (NSA).”
RTFA for lots more scary crap from the government sector responsible for bringing us everything from Agent Orange to Enhanced Interrogation Techniques.
Let me say it once again. Either takeover the Democrats and install a backbone or go the 3rd Party route to twist their arms and inspire the courageous action needed to forestall this version of the future. Because you know we ain’t gonna have any robots big enough to fight back against theirs.
Eideard 
..link?
Fixed. Sorry about that. Holiday undiscipline.
Microsoft’s co-founder has joined a list of science and industry notables, including famed physicist Stephen Hawking and Internet innovator Elon Musk, in calling out the potential threat from machines that can think for themselves. http://www.cnet.com/uk/news/bill-gates-is-worried-about-artificial-intelligence-too/
“An important step in artificial intelligence : Researchers in UCSB’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering are seeking to make computer brains smarter by making them more like our own” http://www.news.ucsb.edu/2015/015416/artificial-brain-important-step Also: “Engineers at the University of California, Santa Cruz made what researchers called a “small, but important step” forward for artificial intelligence. A circuit of roughly 100 artificial synapses was proved it had the ability to classify images. The feat is something humans and animals do daily without giving much thought to it. However, with a rudimentary proof of concept now established, the researchers backed up the belief that artificial neural network could someday be built out to resemble, or best, the one quadrillion synaptic connections that make up the human brain.” http://www.techtimes.com/articles/52639/20150513/artificial-intelligence-becomes-human-like-and-performs-brain-like-task-of-classify
“Hotel staffed by robots to open in Japan” http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/2/5/japan-robot-hotel.html The Henn-na Hotel, or “Strange Hotel,” will open its doors on July 17 on the grounds of Huis Ten Bosch theme park near Nagasaki, according to an announcement from JNTO on Jan. 28. In other news, “Westworld”, the classic 1973 sci-fi flick about malfunctioning androids in a futuristic amusement park for adults is being remade as an episodic TV series by HBO, described as “a dark odyssey about the dawn of artificial consciousness and the future of sin.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westworld_%28TV_series%29
“Machines can build cars; now they’re learning not to crush you” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-02-12/robots-can-build-cars-now-they-re-learning-not-to-crush-you
Björk: “All is Full of Love” (1997) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjI2J2SQ528 See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Is_Full_of_Love#Music_video re: the music video, which is considered a milestone of computer animation and is on permanent exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Woman rescued from vacuum-bot attack http://www.cbsnews.com/news/south-korea-woman-hair-stuck-in-robotic-vacuum-cleaner/
“See Spot. See Spot run!” Spot is a 160 lb four-legged robot designed by Google-owned Boston Dynamics for indoor and outdoor operation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8YjvHYbZ9w “Boston Dynamics builds advanced robots with remarkable behavior: mobility, agility, dexterity and speed. We use sensor-based controls and computation to unlock the capabilities of complex mechanisms. Our world-class development teams take projects from initial concept to proof-of-principle prototyping to build-test-build engineering, to field testing and low-rate production. Organizations worldwide, from DARPA, the US Army, Navy and Marine Corps to Sony Corporation turn to Boston Dynamics for advice and for help creating the most advanced robots on Earth.” On the company website see also the Agile Anthropomorphic Robot, AKA: “Atlas”, a 6-foot (1.8 m) bipedal humanoid robot, based on the company’s earlier PETMAN humanoid robot and “designed for a variety of search and rescue tasks.”
“Is a robot uprising coming in 2015? Maybe – but only to show you up at the arcade.” http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2015/0225/Artificial-intelligence-can-learn-Atari-games-from-scratch-say-scientists-video Led by researchers Demis Hassabis and Volodymyr Mnih, Google-owned DeepMind Technologies has created an artificial intelligence capable of playing simple video games with minimal training. They described their breakthrough today in Nature. See “Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning” http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v518/n7540/full/nature14236.html
“Cockroach robots? Not nightmare fantasy but science lab reality” http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/mar/04/cockroach-robots-not-nightmare-fantasy-but-science-lab-reality Texas engineers attach miniature computer wired into nervous system of live cockroaches for remote control and aim to gather video information in places such as broken sewers. “Insects can do things a robot cannot. They can go into small places, sense the environment, and if there’s movement, from a predator say, they can escape much better than a system designed by a human, we wanted to find ways to work with them.” Hong Liang, who led the research at Texas A&M University. Working with cockroaches has changed how Liang views the insects. “When I first saw them, my hair stood up. But I went on to keep some in my office as pets for a while. They are actually beautiful creatures. They are constantly cleaning themselves,” she said. Their favoured meal was dog food with water. Article includes video and link to “Locomotion control of hybrid cockroach robots” published March 4th 2015 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
“DARPA Robotics Challenge Finals: 25 Teams Will Compete For $3.5 Million Cash Prizes” http://www.techtimes.com/articles/38225/20150308/darpa-robotics-challenge-finals-25-teams-will-compete-for-3-5-million-cash-prizes.htm “Eleven teams previously selected will be joined by 14 new entrants from the United States, Japan, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Germany and Italy for the competition to be held in Pomona, California.”
New report suggests the development of self-driving cars could spur advancements in robotics and cause other ripple effects, potentially benefiting society in a variety of ways. http://www.pcworld.com/article/2893832/selfdriving-car-technology-could-end-up-in-robots.html Autonomous cars as well as robots rely on artificial intelligence, image recognition, GPS and processors, among other technologies, notes a report from consulting firm McKinsey. Some of the hardware used in self-driving cars could find its way into robots, lowering production costs and the price for consumers. Self-driving cars could also help people grow accustomed to other machines, like robots, that can complete tasks without the need for human intervention. Commonly used parts could allow auto mechanics to fix robots as well, said the report, released Thursday. Infrastructure like machine-to-machine communication networks could also be shared.