Make Robots not War

There was a show called Robot Wars that was on weekly on the telly, the tube , T.V. It was a lot of fun to watch. The robots were not true robots. According to my robot mentor, more on him later, true robots equipped with machine intelligence are autonomous and self directing. The robots of this show were remote controlled from the side lines. The competition was light hearted and the machines were  well built by their respective teams. The show in England went on for many years and I felt it gave the sport a bit more respect than the American version of the show.

The reason I am bringing all this up is that one competition on the American show stands out in my mind. This particular show featured a walking robot versus one that was very powerful. It was a mismatch for it took the opposition about two seconds to crush the life out of the walker. It was shocking and very upsetting to witness.  I thought about the creator of the walker. He took the pulverization of his robot well for the cameras but my heart went  out to him. I venture to guess that he was like most robot builders. He must have poured his energy and talent for uncounted hours that stretched into months. As his creation took shape he must have spent more than one painstaking hour to fine tune his machine so that it would perform just right. If that had been my machine and I saw it torn to bits I would have been devastated.

So I ask myself, if a robot builder does not want his work destroyed, what motivates those who build robots just to be destroyed ??  Obviously pure research does not figure into their equation. I am going out on a limb to state that profit, the accumulation of wealth is the motive behind the creation of these machines. By all means use technology to safegaurd the lives of our brave soldiers. The biggest difficulty is that these artifacts we are creating will have a simple, basic  form of intelligence.

Here definitions will begin to crowd into my discussion. How we define the fundamental concepts is very crucial. The popular phrase used by the world to describe this kind of intelligence we are creating is  "Artificial Intelligence". Does this definition derive from the artificial sweetner we invented to replace sugar. In mathematics the square root of negative one is called the j operator, the imaginary unit. The choice of the term is unfortubate for this particular quatity is not imaginary. It was introduced because people thought that to extract a square root of a negative number was inconceivable. My, my it seems we are at that stage when we discuss the concept of endowing machines with a simple form of intelligence. I prefer to use the term Machine Intelligence.

When it finally appears it will be a real intelligence, different from our own  but existing and hopefully reacting in our environment. The ones used now in war theatres are remote contolled. There is always a man in the loop and they are not armed, unless you want to include a cruise missile as a robot ,but to me that is stretching the definition. Some definitions are so loose especially when it comes to robots that they are useless. Some are so weak that the old phonograph turntable was considered a robot.

As robots become more complex and their intelligence grow what will they be like ?? Will the money chasers disable all but the elements that make them slaves to the most vile commands that a man can give.

So now we have robots at war ,an obvious wrong. We will have robots with their potential  short circuited for profit, another wrong. What did a wise man and gentle man say once, two wrongs do not make a right. We do not have the right to do this to our robots!!!

Take Care

Pius