What if advanced robotics eliminates the need for human labor?

[EvadingGrid]

bump... AJ has been talking about this on Todays Show

[bento]

I would like to change my vote to all of the above. They will make us compete with the robotic labor but because we need to eat and sleep we will loose. Then we will be forced to go on welfare financed by our national debt(competing with the banker theft and wars of aggression). We will be forced into the cities or FEMA camps(prisons) because that is where the government housing is. They will say even then we are just freeloaders because it costs to much to feed us because we don't produce as much as the machines. They will then start killing us off to save the planet from us useless eaters. Anyone that is still free will be killed by the autonomous robots, because even solders will be expendable at that point. So we will be in every category one after another before they kill us.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/rise-of-the-droids-will-robots-eventually-steal-all-of-our-jobs.html

Rise Of The Droids: Will Robots Eventually Steal All Of Our Jobs?

Michael Snyder
Economic Collapse
Feb 5, 2013

Will a robot take your job?  We have entered a period in human history when technology is advancing at an exponential rate.  In some ways, this has been a great blessing for humanity.  For example, I am absolutely blown away by all of the things that my little iPod can do.  But on the other hand, all of this technology is eliminating millions upon millions of high paying jobs.  In the past, I have written extensively about how millions of American jobs have been sent to the other side of the world, but now we may be moving into a time when workers all over the planet will be steadily losing jobs to super-efficient robots.  For employers, robots provide a lot of advantages to human workers.  Robots never complain, they never get tired, they never need vacation, they never show up late, they never waste time of Facebook, they don’t need any health benefits and there are a whole lot of rules, regulations and taxes that you must deal with when you hire a human worker.  In the past, robots were exceedingly expensive, and that limited their usefulness in the workplace, but as you will see later in this article that is rapidly changing.  As robots continue to become even more advanced and even less expensive, will there eventually come a point where the “human worker” is virtually obsolete?

Of course I can hear the objections already.  Many of you will insist that even though automation has always eliminated jobs in the past, it has also always created new jobs that were even better.  For instance, once upon a time most of the U.S. population worked on farms, but thanks to automation now hardly any of us do.

But what happens when we get to the point where super-intelligent robots are more efficient at everything?

What will be left for “human workers” to do?

And if human workers are no longer needed for most tasks, what will their role in society be?

Personally, I still complain about self-service check-in kiosks at airports and self-checkout lanes at supermarkets, but most people seem to have accepted them.  There are even many bank branches now that don’t have any humans in them at all.  The number of jobs where a human worker is absolutely “required” is dwindling all the time.

And a lot of the jobs that are disappearing thanks to advances in technology are fairly high paying jobs.  In fact, one recent study of employment data from 20 countries discovered that “almost all the jobs disappearing are in industries that pay middle-class wages, ranging from $38,000 to $68,000.”

As I mentioned earlier, in the past robots were simply far too expensive to perform most tasks.  So human workers had an advantage.

But that advantage is disappearing right in front of our eyes.  For example, one company has produced a new robot called “Baxter” that only costs $22,000.  The following is from an article about Baxter in the MIT Technology Review…

Baxter was conceived by Rodney Brooks, the Australian roboticist and artificial-intelligence expert who left MIT to build a $22,000 humanoid robot that can easily be programmed to do simple jobs that have never been automated before.

Eventually, the goal is to produce versions of Baxter that will perform tasks even more cheaply than Chinese workers do…

Brooks’s company, Rethink Robotics, says the robot will spark a “renaissance” in American manufacturing by helping small companies compete against low-wage offshore labor. Baxter will do that by accelerating a trend of factory efficiency that’s eliminated more jobs in the U.S. than overseas competition has. Of the approximately 5.8 million manufacturing jobs the U.S. lost between 2000 and 2010, according to McKinsey Global Institute, two-thirds were lost because of higher productivity and only 20 percent moved to places like China, Mexico, or Thailand.

The ultimate goal is for robots like Baxter to take over more complex tasks, such as fitting together parts on an electronics assembly line. “A couple more ticks of Moore’s Law and you’ve got automation that works more cheaply than Chinese labor does,” Andrew McAfee, an MIT researcher, predicted last year at a conference in Tucson, Arizona, where Baxter was discussed.

So it won’t just be American workers that will be displaced by robots – it will literally be workers all over the planet.

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/u-s-air-force-developing-terrifying-swarms-of-tiny-unmanned-drones-that-can-hover-crawl-and-even-kill-targets.html

U.S. Air Force developing terrifying swarms of tiny unmanned drones

That can hover, crawl and even kill targets

MICHAEL ZENNIE
UK Daily Mail
Feb 20, 2013

The U.S. Air Force is developing tiny unmanned drones that will fly in swarms, hover like bees, crawl like spiders and even sneak up on unsuspecting targets and execute them with lethal precision.

The Air Vehicles Directorate, a research arm of the Air Force, has released a computer-animated video outlining the the future capabilities of Micro Air Vehicles (MAVs). The project promises to revolutionize war by down-sizing the combatants.

‘MAVs will become a vital element in the ever-changing war-fighting environment and will help ensure success on the battlefield of the future,’ the narrator intones.

‘Unobtrusive, pervasive, lethal – Micro Air Vehicles, enhancing the capabilities of the future war fighter.’

Full article here

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/special-report-darpas-killer-robot-army.html

Special Report: DARPA’s Killer Robot Army

Prison Planet.com
March 2, 2013

Mike Adams analyzes DARPA’s latest science fiction turned reality developments.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjfVexRJPNo

[Constitutionary]

Who knew we would ever get so close to a terminator like scenerio in 2013.  WOW !!!!!!!!!!!

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.infowars.com/us-army-colonel-issues-warning-about-remorseless-killer-robots/

US Army Colonel Issues Warning About Remorseless “Killer Robots”

Drones are the “start of the rise of the machines”

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
March 14, 2013

Award-winning military writer and former intelligence officer Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer has penned an essay warning of the threat posed by remorseless “killer robots” that will be used to stalk and slaughter human targets in the near future.



Pryer worked in military intelligence after joining the US Army in 1992 and has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo. He has won several prestigious awards since he began writing in 2009.

In an essay published by the United States Army Combined Arms Center, Pryer laments how the use of unmanned drones – which kill 50 innocent civilians for every suspected terrorist – are perpetuating wars and endangering America’s global reputation. He then makes a stark warning that the drone strike program is merely a pre-cursor to the kind of nightmare technocracy depicted in the Terminator movies.

“It seems heart-breakingly obvious that future generations will someday look back upon the last decade as the start of the rise of the machines,” writes Pryer, adding that the US government is developing, “robots so advanced that they make today’s Predators and Reapers look positively impotent and antique. These killer robots, though, will share one thing in common with their primitive progenitors: with remorseless purpose, they will stalk and kill any human deemed “a legitimate target” by their controllers and programmers.”

Pryer’s comments echo those of Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, who has repeatedly warned that the robots currently being developed under the auspices of DARPA will eventually be used to kill.

Sharkey described the DARPA robots as “an incredible technical achievement, but it’s unfortunate that it’s going to be used to kill people.”

“It’s going to be used for chasing people across the desert, I would imagine. I can’t think of many civilian applications – maybe for hunting, or farming, for rounding up sheep.” Sharkey added.

“But of course if it’s used for combat, it would be killing civilians as well as it’s not going to be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers.”

In a 50-page report published last year, Human Rights Watch also warned that artificially intelligent robots let loose on the battlefield would inevitably commit war crimes.

“Giving machines the power to decide who lives and dies on the battlefield would take technology too far. Human control of robotic warfare is essential to minimizing civilian deaths and injuries. It is essential to stop the development of killer robots before they show up in national arsenal. As countries become more invested in this technology, it will become harder to persuade them to give it up,” said, HRW’s Steve Goose, calling for a ban on the technology.

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/new-drone-could-snatch-humans-off-the-street.html

New Drone Could ‘Snatch Humans Off the Street’

UAV mimics how an eagle grabs its prey

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
March 15, 2013

A new flying drone developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania could one day be used to snatch humans off the street.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ol8c9bdp7YI (Avian-Inspired Grasping For Quadrotor Micro Aerial Vehicles)

Justin Thomas and his colleagues at the GRASP Lab have produced an “avian-inspired” claw drone that mimics the way an eagle uses its talons to grab a fish out of the ocean.

A video clip of the drone shows the UAV swooping down at high speed to snatch an object using its 3D printed mechanical claw. By mimicking how a bald eagle sweeps its legs and claws backwards to aerodynamically close in on its prey without the need to slow down, the drone is able to grasp a stationary object with precise efficiency.

Drexel University’s Christopher Korpela is simultaneously developing flight stability software for drones with arms that would enable the UAV’s to carry a weighty object without them falling out of the air. The eventual purpose of the drones would be focused around “interacting with people or the environment,” although that is still a long way off according to Korpela.

Technology journalist Adario Strange envisages a future scenario where a larger version of the eagle claw drone could be used by law enforcement or military to pluck humans off the ground.

“The optimistic view of this development offers a vision of an emergency situation in which a drone could rapidly fly in and save a person from a perilous situation, but it’s also fairly easy to imagine law enforcement and the military using this development to grab human targets in coming years,” writes Strange, reporting for DVice.com.

“We may be about to see a return to the days when unseen hunters lurking in the sky could easily snatch a human right off the street,” he adds, referring to the pterosaur, a flying reptile that existed 65 million years ago.

Although this incarnation of the eagle claw drone is far too small to snatch and grab a human, the potential that larger models could be deployed for that very purpose in future is sure to make many nervous.

As we reported yesterday, military insiders like Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer are warning that drone technology will soon metastasize into armies of remorseless killer robots which will be used to stalk and incapacitate human targets.

Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, has also repeatedly warned that the robots currently being developed under the auspices of DARPA will eventually be used to kill.

“Of course if it’s used for combat, it would be killing civilians as well as it’s not going to be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers,” said Sharkey.

[madasheck]

I can't help but think of Seven of Nine. At first, she would say "I am Borg" to even the slightest suggestion of her former humanity. But before long, she so wanted to be human when she realized the advantages of having a reason to exist. Machines have no reason to exist, they just...exist.

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-fatal-flaw-in-the-human-machine-interface.html

The fatal flaw in the human-machine interface

Jon Rappoport
Prison Planet.com
March 22, 2013

There is a great deal of research going on in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) merging with the brain.

Exuberant cheerleaders like Roy Kurzweil are quite confident that we are approaching a moment when a computer will exhibit all the power of the human brain.

The definition of “power” in this context is fuzzy. But Kurzweil and others are sure we’re about to uncover the “algorithm” that underlies all brain activity.

They couldn’t be more wrong. Neuroscience has barely scratched the surface of understanding how the brain operates. Cracking the code is not on the horizon.

This fact reflects a much deeper problem. PR is not science. Predictions about what is imminent are not the same thing as verified research results.

PR is not information.

In exactly the same way, were a human-computer interface with awesome capability endowed with access to a hundred galaxies of stored data, it would run up against the problem of vast chronic misinformation in those cosmic warehouses.

This is not something that can be deleted with a program or a committee tasked with making corrective changes.

For example, and this is just one area, medical science is so rife with fraud, at so many levels, as I’ve demonstrated over and over again for the past 10 years, that it would take humans decades to expose a significant part of it. And AI wouldn’t even know where or how to begin looking, because…who would set the parameters of such an investigation?

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/robo-reporters-to-replace-mainstream-journalists.html

Robo-Reporters to Replace Mainstream Journalists?
       
Establishment hacks now so glib and unquestioning they could be supplanted by computer programs

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
March 27, 2013

The mainstream media is now so glib, unquestioning and intellectually castrated that robo-reporters could soon replace real journalists – without anyone noticing.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k81G9T1UnJE

Computer algorithms are already being used to manufacture news stories about earthquakes and other data-rich issues and this same process could soon be employed for sports games and eventually more complicated news stories – rendering many journalists obsolete.

Human editors would probably still be needed to check stories before publication, but the actual process of writing articles could be handed over completely to artificially intelligent software programs.

The Vancouver Sun reports today that the Los Angeles Times is already using robo-reporters for some of its content, thanks to a computer program developed by the newspaper’s digital editor Ken Schwencke.

The article explores the ethical concerns of assigning “routine news tasks” to robo-reporters, which would “lighten the load for everybody involved” according to Schwencke. Alfred Hermida, associate professor at the University of British Columbia, concluded that if the computer algorithm was created by the reporter, the generation of news stories by a robo-reporter would be acceptable.

Given that mainstream media reporters have already proven themselves adept at regurgitating official statements and passing it off as news with no journalistic inquiry whatsoever, one wonders if anyone will really be able to detect if written stories are the work of real people or computer programs.

With many jobs in the unskilled labor market, such as waiters in some Chinese restaurants, now being replaced by robots, it won’t be too long before many so-called skilled professions are also supplanted by cyborgs or computer-generated artificial intelligence.

Watch the video above for a full breakdown on how this represents a damning indictment of the increasing irrelevancy of mainstream media.

[Brocke]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/the-fatal-flaw-in-the-human-machine-interface.html

The fatal flaw in the human-machine interface

Jon Rappoport
Prison Planet.com
March 22, 2013

There is a great deal of research going on in the area of artificial intelligence (AI) merging with the brain.

Exuberant cheerleaders like Roy Kurzweil are quite confident that we are approaching a moment when a computer will exhibit all the power of the human brain.

The definition of “power” in this context is fuzzy. But Kurzweil and others are sure we’re about to uncover the “algorithm” that underlies all brain activity.

They couldn’t be more wrong. Neuroscience has barely scratched the surface of understanding how the brain operates. Cracking the code is not on the horizon.

This fact reflects a much deeper problem. PR is not science. Predictions about what is imminent are not the same thing as verified research results.

PR is not information.

In exactly the same way, were a human-computer interface with awesome capability endowed with access to a hundred galaxies of stored data, it would run up against the problem of vast chronic misinformation in those cosmic warehouses.

This is not something that can be deleted with a program or a committee tasked with making corrective changes.

For example, and this is just one area, medical science is so rife with fraud, at so many levels, as I’ve demonstrated over and over again for the past 10 years, that it would take humans decades to expose a significant part of it. And AI wouldn’t even know where or how to begin looking, because…who would set the parameters of such an investigation?

[Continued...]

Great article!

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/darpa-robots-now-use-tools.html

DARPA Robots Now Use Tools

Huge leaps forward in droids that experts warns will be used to “kill people”

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
April 2, 2013

DARPA, the technological arm of the Pentagon, has developed a robotic arm that can perform precise actions using tools, a huge leap forward in the evolution of robotics, but one that comes with potentially destructive implications.

Extremetech reports that, unlike many other robotics developers out there, DARPA has developed a cheap robotic hand, for under $3000, that can “almost match human performance in dexterous activities, like changing a tire.”

The report warns that the development could be “ominous”, in that our biggest advantage over other forms of life on Earth is that we have the ability and intellect to precisely use tools.

As highlighted in the following video, the DARPA robotic arm can perform detailed tasks such as using a pair of tweezers to pick up objects.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scOd9aILwPY

DARPA also notes that the developments shown in the video are now outdated, and that the latest models are much more advanced, performing tasks such as threading a nut onto a bolt, opening a zipper, and recognizing objects by touch.

Gill Pratt, a program manager at DARPA, told the New York Times that developing the ability to move like a human hand has a lot of important military uses.

The Extremetech report notes that these developments are “pretty cool”, so long as the machine doesn’t figure out how to “rise up against it’s creators”.

That may sound far-fetched, but it is something that experts have been warning about for some time.

Last year, when Department of Defense contractor Boston Dynamics announced that it now has a robot that can run faster than the fastest human on the planet, with a flexible spine to help it “zigzag to chase and evade,” Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, said the robot was “an incredible technical achievement, but it’s unfortunate that it’s going to be used to kill people”.

“It’s going to be used for chasing people across the desert, I would imagine. I can’t think of many civilian applications – maybe for hunting, or farming, for rounding up sheep.” Sharkey added.

“But of course if it’s used for combat, it would be killing civilians as well as it’s not going to be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers.” he said.

Sharkey has previously warned that the world may be sleepwalking into a potentially lethal technocracy and has called for safeguards on such technology to be put into place.

In 2008, Professor Sharkey told listeners of the Alex Jones show:

“If you have an autonomous robot then it’s going to make decisions who to kill, when to kill and where to kill them. The scary thing is that the reason this has to happen is because of mission complexity and also so that when there’s a problem with communications you can send a robot in with no communication and it will decide who to kill, and that is really worrying to me.”

The professor also warned that such autonomous weapons could easily be used in the future by law enforcement officials in cites, pointing out that South Korean authorities are already planning to have a fully armed autonomous robot police force in their cities.

Boston Dynamics has also been contracted by DARPA to develop and build humanoid robots that can act intelligently without supervision, in a deal worth $10.9 million.

The DoD announced last year that “The robotic platforms will be humanoid, consisting of two legs, a torso, two arms with hands, a sensor head and on board computing.”

DARPA’s website says that the robots will help “conduct humanitarian, disaster relief and related operations.”

“The plan identifies requirements to extend aid to victims of natural or man-made disasters and conduct evacuation operations.” reads the brief, first released in April 2012 as part of DARPA’s ‘Robotics Challenge’.

The robots will operate with “supervised autonomy”, according to DARPA, and will be able to act intelligently by themselves, making their own decisions if and when direct supervision is not possible.

The Pentagon also envisions that the robots will be able to use basic and diverse “tools”.

“The primary technical goal of the DRC is to develop ground robots capable of executing complex tasks in dangerous, degraded, human-engineered environments. Competitors in the DRC are expected to focus on robots that can use standard tools and equipment commonly available in human environments, ranging from hand tools to vehicles, with an emphasis on adaptability to tools with diverse specifications.” reads the original brief.

The robots are set to be completed by Aug. 9, 2014, according to the contract.

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

Note: I some how missed the following when it was originally published several months ago, but since it's by the same magazine that published the 2000 article by Bill Joy which largely inspired this thread to begin with, and since it's such an excellent piece of writing, I figured it was much better to post it a bit late than never...

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/all/

Better Than Human: Why Robots Will — And Must — Take Our Jobs

By Kevin Kelly
Wired.com
Dec. 24, 2012

Imagine that 7 out of 10 working Americans got fired tomorrow. What would they all do?

It’s hard to believe you’d have an economy at all if you gave pink slips to more than half the labor force. But that—in slow motion—is what the industrial revolution did to the workforce of the early 19th century. Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines. But the displaced workers did not sit idle. Instead, automation created hundreds of millions of jobs in entirely new fields. Those who once farmed were now manning the legions of factories that churned out farm equipment, cars, and other industrial products. Since then, wave upon wave of new occupations have arrived—appliance repairman, offset printer, food chemist, photographer, web designer—each building on previous automation. Today, the vast majority of us are doing jobs that no farmer from the 1800s could have imagined.

It may be hard to believe, but before the end of this century, 70 percent of today’s occupations will likewise be replaced by automation. Yes, dear reader, even you will have your job taken away by machines. In other words, robot replacement is just a matter of time. This upheaval is being led by a second wave of automation, one that is centered on artificial cognition, cheap sensors, machine learning, and distributed smarts. This deep automation will touch all jobs, from manual labor to knowledge work.

First, machines will consolidate their gains in already-automated industries. After robots finish replacing assembly line workers, they will replace the workers in warehouses. Speedy bots able to lift 150 pounds all day long will retrieve boxes, sort them, and load them onto trucks. Fruit and vegetable picking will continue to be robotized until no humans pick outside of specialty farms. Pharmacies will feature a single pill-dispensing robot in the back while the pharmacists focus on patient consulting. Next, the more dexterous chores of cleaning in offices and schools will be taken over by late-night robots, starting with easy-to-do floors and windows and eventually getting to toilets. The highway legs of long-haul trucking routes will be driven by robots embedded in truck cabs.

All the while, robots will continue their migration into white-collar work. We already have artificial intelligence in many of our machines; we just don’t call it that. Witness one piece of software by Narrative Science (profiled in issue 20.05) that can write newspaper stories about sports games directly from the games’ stats or generate a synopsis of a company’s stock performance each day from bits of text around the web. Any job dealing with reams of paperwork will be taken over by bots, including much of medicine. Even those areas of medicine not defined by paperwork, such as surgery, are becoming increasingly robotic. The rote tasks of any information-intensive job can be automated. It doesn’t matter if you are a doctor, lawyer, architect, reporter, or even programmer: The robot takeover will be epic.

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/new-darpa-robot-looks-human.html

New DARPA Robot Looks Human

Experts warn cyborgs will eventually be used to kill

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
April 8, 2013

The new incarnation of Boston Dynamics’ PETMAN robot, being developed for DARPA with Department of Defense funding, not only looks human but it also sweats to regulate body temperature.

     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFrjrgBV8K0

A new video showing PETMAN in action depicts the robot dressed up in a post-apocalyptic chem-bio suit with sensors embedded to detect hazardous chemicals.

“Decked out in chem-resistant camo and a dystopic gas mask, this robot couldn’t look more human,” writes Jason Dorrier.

When the clothing is removed, the robot looks something like Sonny from the movie I, Robot. PETMAN is self-balancing and can also do push-ups, walk, stretch, and squat.

As you can see from the previous incarnations of PETMAN in the videos below, as the robot’s capabilities increase, so does its resemblance to a human being.

That will only serve to increase concerns expressed by numerous robotic experts, that the Pentagon’s fleet of cyborgs is being developed with one primary goal in mind – to pursue “suspects” and kill large numbers of people on the future battlefield.

Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, has repeatedly warned that the robots currently being developed under the auspices of DARPA will eventually be used to kill.

“Of course if it’s used for combat, it would be killing civilians as well as it’s not going to be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers,” said Sharkey.

Last month, award-winning military writer and former intelligence officer Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer also wrote an essay warning of the threat posed by remorseless “killer robots” that will be used to stalk and slaughter human targets in the near future.

In a 50-page report published last year, Human Rights Watch also warned that artificially intelligent robots let loose on the battlefield would inevitably commit war crimes.

Last year, experts at the prestigious University of Cambridge announced a project to conduct research into the “extinction-level risks” posed to humanity by artificially intelligent robots.

[Continued...]

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/pentagon-to-build-robots-with-real-brains.html

Pentagon to Build Robots With ‘Real’ Brains

Technology would make robots “truly anonymous”

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
April 11, 2013

A Pentagon-funded team of scientists have constructed a machine that functions like a human brain and would enable robots to think independently and act autonomously.



Researchers for DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) have created a device that “looks and ‘thinks’ like a human brain,” James K. Gimzewski, professor of chemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, told National Defense Magazine.

The program is called “physical intelligence” and is capable, “without being programmed like a traditional robot, of performing actions similar to humans,” making it the first incarnation of a robot that can perform “truly autonomously” without human input.

“What sets this new device apart from any others is that it has nano-scale interconnected wires that perform billions of connections like a human brain, and is capable of remembering information,” writes Sandra I. Erwin. “Each connection is a synthetic synapse. A synapse is what allows a neuron to pass an electric or chemical signal to another cell. Because its structure is so complex, most artificial intelligence projects so far have been unable to replicate it.”

The technology would allow drones to be created that do not need human operators, machines that would be able to learn and navigate through terrain completely of their own accord.

According to Erwin, it is not yet confirmed whether the Pentagon will look to apply the technology to weapons systems.

However, given the fact that the vast majority of DARPA’s work in robotics is geared towards creating an army of battlefield soldiers, it’s not a huge leap to make.

Numerous experts have warned that robots currently being developed in the name of humanitarian assistance will ultimately be used to kill enemy soldiers and accused terrorists.

Noel Sharkey, professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield, has repeatedly warned that the robots currently being developed under the auspices of DARPA will eventually be used to kill.

“Of course if it’s used for combat, it would be killing civilians as well as it’s not going to be able to discriminate between civilians and soldiers,” said Sharkey.

Last month, award-winning military writer and former intelligence officer Lt. Col. Douglas Pryer also wrote an essay warning of the threat posed by remorseless “killer robots” that will be used to stalk and slaughter human targets in the near future.

[Continued...]

[LoudMcCloud]

They grow the brains from abortion fetuses.  They talk about it in a ted talks episode. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6CVj5IQkzk

[Geolibertarian]

http://www.prisonplanet.com/robots-will-do-everything-you-do-now-only-better-what-then.html

Robots Will Do Everything You Do Now Only Better – What Then?

Singularity Hub
April 29, 2013

The S&P 500 is near record highs, having finally regained all it lost in the 2008 financial crisis. It would be cause for celebration if it didn’t feel so out of touch with the “main street” reality of continued high unemployment. As a recent New York Times headline read, “recovery in the US is lifting profits, but not adding jobs.”
 
The NYT goes on to blame the divide between rising corporate profits, recovering stocks, and stubborn unemployment on big gains in productivity over the last few years. The article notes that the giant industrial conglomerate, United Technologies, “does not need as many workers as it once did to churn out higher sales and profits.”
 
While United Technologies (and other manufacturing firms) may not be adding jobs, it’s strange to blame today’s high rate of unemployment on the trend. Due in large part to automation, manufacturing jobs have been disappearing for over 30 years. During that period, unemployment has been as high as 10.8% and as low as 3.8%. A better headline might read, “recovery in the US is lifting profits, but not adding traditional jobs in manufacturing and that’s nothing new.”


Credit: MJ Perry, Carpe Diem, BEA, BLS

It’s rarely noted, but even as manufacturing jobs have steadily decreased, total manufacturing output has steadily grown. Since World War II, manufacturing output in the US has risen over 700%. While rising productivity is often demonized as a job killer, in truth, it is a very powerful force for good in the modern economy.
 
The time and creativity that productivity growth frees—and it’s been happening since the Industrial Revolution—is responsible for every modern invention from healthcare to high tech, smartphones to non-invasive surgery. If humans hadn’t started using machines to do some things for us, most would still be working in the fields with few moments to spare pondering economic theory, let alone inventing new technologies.

Full article here

[LoudMcCloud]

They grow the brains from abortion fetuses.  They talk about it in a ted talks episode. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6CVj5IQkzk

They edited that part out.  LOL>   Crazy!