Baby Steps
In both the 'Matrix' and 'Terminator'
movies, one of sci-fi's favorite themes — robots controlling the future
— was vividly brought to the big screen.
But we all laughed, of course.
Robots, controlling the future? Yeah, makes for a great book or movie,
but there's simply no way it could ever really happen. People would
simply turn the machines off before they went too far. The flip of
a switch!
No problem.
However, just for the sake of argument,
and no matter how wacky it seems, let's pretend that it actually could
come about and ask ourselves how. Obviously, we'd really have
to stretch the truth at times, but that's what good sci-fi writing is all
about.
For example, I guess we'd have to
start with something really wild, like the military inventing some kind
of "automated battlefield killer robots" or something, and incorporate
them into the military arsenal real slowly so the public doesn't become
alarmed.
Yeah, like that would ever
happen.
 Intelligent
machines deployed on battlefields around the world -- from mobile grenade
launchers to rocket-firing drones -- can already identify and lock onto
targets without human help.
There are more than 4,000 US military
robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked
hundreds of thousands of flight hours.
...
But up to now, a human hand has always
been required to push the button or pull the trigger.
...
Military leaders "are quite clear
that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are
more cost-effective and give a risk-free war," he said.
Several countries, led by the United
States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use
on the battlefield.
...
Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute
of Technology, who has worked closely with the US military on robotics,
agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual.
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Okay, so maybe the idea wasn't that
far-fetched.
But we'd still need some kind of
nefarious way in which all of these autonomous killer robots could be controlled
by some kind of crazy, devious 'mastermind' computer, right? But
that would mean they'd all have to be infected by the same malicious, self-perpetuating,
self-learning computer worm whose sole purpose in life is to infect the
current computer and move on to the next until every microchip on the planet
is infected!
Yeah, like that would ever
happen.
Microsoft is taking a leaf out of
the virus writers' handbook, hoping to use friendly "worms" to distribute
software patches surreptitiously.
...
Vojnovic said his worms were capable
of learning from past experience.
...
The worm starts by randomly probing
for an uninfected host and then targets other computers on the same network.
If it fails to find a cluster of uninfected hosts it changes its strategy
in order to maximize the number of computers it can patch.
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Okay, okay — so maybe the idea wasn't
that far-fetched.
But hold on a sec. These infected
autonomous battlefield killer robots can't somehow magically communicate
with each other, right? They'd still need some kind of huge "new
generation" military satellite network to link them all together, like
that Skynet system in 'The Terminator', right?
Yeah, like that would ever
happen.
The British military communications
satellite Skynet 5B launched successfully from Kourou in French Guiana
at 2206 GMT last night. The spacecraft will complete the UK armed forces'
planned new generation of orbital communications coverage.
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If you've ever wondered just how
those nightmare 'Terminator' scenarios begin, I'd say a few of the key
pieces just fell into place.
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