When will humans turn over the job of war to robot slaves? According to Peter W Singer, author of the new book Wired for War, it's happening already. In this week's Science Saturday, Peter and John Horgan discuss the role of robots in the success of the Iraq surge and whether America is starting to look like a bit like Skynet to the people of the Middle East. They also discuss reasons to fear the coming of cyborgs and whether robots might not someday bring about the end of war.
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Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
by P.W. Singer
New York: Penguin
2009
For some reason, collectively humans seem to have a hard time seeing around corners to anticipate the shape our future will take. Of those of us who remember email as a newish thing, I…
Originally published by Janet Stemwedel
On February 9, 2009, at 6:25 PMWired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century
by P.W. Singer
New York: Penguin
2009
For some reason, collectively humans seem to have a hard time seeing around corners to anticipate the shape our future…
Johnson and Horgan are back on this week's Science Saturday diavlog on Bloggingheads.tv:
From BHTV:
In this week's episode of Science Saturday, John Horgan and George Johnson explain how the latest Jarmusch film, "The Limits of Control," conveys a message of significance for struggling science…
Yes, I've cribbed the title from Chris Hedges' superb, must-read book, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. But Josh Marshall stumbles across a great insight about the Iraq War and Occupation, but doesn't quite carry through all the way. So the Mad Biologist will. Marshall writes about…
Robots will become far more a weapon of war, but it will not end war, any more than staged sports contests will end war.
When a conflict rises to the war state, it has already passed the normal rule based bounds of civilization. It's persued until on side is so decimated that it cannot continue or has completely lost the will to continue. Losing robots does not put a nation in that position. The losing side (or both sides) will put more and more on the line, at more and more risk until the conflict simply cannot be continued.