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Source: Al Jazeera
UN talks fail to open negotiations on 'killer robots'
Manufacturing countries including Russia and the US are opposing negotiations on the use of autonomous weapons that may result in new international treaties.
The international campaign Stop Killer Robots has been pushing for negotiations aimed at adopting an international treaty. [Foto: Wolfgang Kumm/AFP] (DPA)
December 18, 2021
Country officials and campaigners have expressed disappointment after United Nations talks on autonomous weapons systems – known as "killer robots" – stopped short of launching negotiations into an international treaty to govern their use following opposition from manufacturing states.
Unlike existing semi-autonomous weapons such as drones, fully-autonomous weapons have no human-operated "kill switch" and instead leave decisions over life and death to sensors, software and machine processes.
The regulation of the industry has taken on new urgency since a UN panel report in March said the first autonomous drone attack may have occurred in Libya. This week, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres encouraged the 125 parties to the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons (CCW) to come up with an "ambitious plan" on new rules.
But on Friday, the Sixth Review Conference of the CCW failed to schedule further talks around the development and use of the Lethal Autonomous Weapon Systems, or LAWS.
Countries already investing heavily in the development of LAWS attended the five-day meeting in Geneva, blocking a majority from agreeing on steps to establish legally-binding rules on machine-operated weapons.
Sources following the talks told Reuters news agency that Russia, India and the United States were among the countries that pushed back against a new LAWS treaty. The US has pointed to the benefits of LAWS, including precision.
"At the present rate of progress, the pace of technological development risks overtaking our deliberations," said Switzerland's Disarmament Ambassador Felix Baumann, voicing discontent at the outcome of the UN intergovernmental panel, which has been held for the past eight years.
Please go to Al Jazeera to read more.
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Source: The Mind Unleashed
US Navy Says It's Trying to Avoid 'Terminator' Scenario as Experts Warn of AI Battlefield Tech
According to a U.S. Navy official, the nightmare scenario of wars entrusted to machines could become a reality.
September 16, 2019 | By Elias Marat
(TMU) — It's long been an image restricted to popular culture: unstoppable robot killers firing their high-powered rifles at clusters of helpless human soldiers with no choice but to flee the battlefield or risk sustaining tremendous losses.
The scenario of military robots and the artificial intelligence (AI) network "Skynet" spinning free from human control forms the basis of the Terminator series starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that has captivated moviegoers around the world. But now, according to a U.S. Navy official, the science fiction nightmare of wars entrusted to machines that "can't be reasoned with [and] doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear,"—as one character in the original film says—could become a reality.
The comments come as the Navy continues to upgrade its autonomous capabilities and bulk up its ranks with more advanced robotic systems.
However, this has been accompanied by work meant to prevent the service from putting too much trust into a system that could, some fear, one day have a mind of its own.
Steve Olsen, deputy branch head of the Navy's mine warfare office, told Defense News:
Earlier this year, the Sea Hunter was the first ship of any kind to ever sail without a crew from San Diego, California, to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and back.
Please go to The Mind Unleashed to read and view more.
Source: The Mind Unleashed
US Navy Says It's Trying to Avoid 'Terminator' Scenario as Experts Warn of AI Battlefield Tech
According to a U.S. Navy official, the nightmare scenario of wars entrusted to machines could become a reality.
September 16, 2019 | By Elias Marat
The scenario of military robots and the artificial intelligence (AI) network "Skynet" spinning free from human control forms the basis of the Terminator series starring Arnold Schwarzenegger that has captivated moviegoers around the world. But now, according to a U.S. Navy official, the science fiction nightmare of wars entrusted to machines that "can't be reasoned with [and] doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear,"—as one character in the original film says—could become a reality.
The comments come as the Navy continues to upgrade its autonomous capabilities and bulk up its ranks with more advanced robotic systems.
However, this has been accompanied by work meant to prevent the service from putting too much trust into a system that could, some fear, one day have a mind of its own.
Steve Olsen, deputy branch head of the Navy's mine warfare office, told Defense News:
"Trust is something that is difficult to come by with a computer, especially as we start working with our test and evaluation community.Comparing the pitfalls of autonomous war-fighting systems to the car crashes involving semi-autonomous private automobiles, Olsen continued:
I've worked with our test and evaluation director, and a lot of times it's: 'Hey, what's that thing going to do?' And I say: 'I don't know, it's going to pick the best path.'"
"And they don't like that at all because autonomy makes a lot of people nervous. But the flip side of this is that there is one thing that we have to be very careful of, and that's that we don't over-trust. Everybody has seen on the news [when people] over-trusted their Tesla car. That is something that we can't do when we talk about weapons' system.The Navy is already experimenting with a 135-ton autonomous unmanned surface vehicle (USV) named the Sea Hunter, which is meant to provide an autonomous platform for anti-submarine and electronic warfare as well as provide a decoy in any live-fire clash involving human forces.
The last thing we want to see is the whole 'Terminator going crazy' [scenario], so we're working very hard to take the salient steps to protect ourselves and others."
Earlier this year, the Sea Hunter was the first ship of any kind to ever sail without a crew from San Diego, California, to Pearl Harbor, Hawaii and back.
Please go to The Mind Unleashed to read and view more.
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Jeff Bezos' Ring doorbell company registered 17 new patents to use biometric technology to identify and report 'suspicious' people – here's what we know so far
December 16, 2021 | By Hannah Bertolino
At this point, it’s not shocking to hear that tech billionaires have pioneered the next dystopian surveillance product. Just last week, Tesla's Elon Musk announced that his microchips will be ready for human brain implantation in 2022, and in October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed his ploy to expand into the digital metaverse, where users can exist virtually in an interactive environment.
In case that wasn't enough, Amazon's Jeff Bezos' has announced his own nightmarish endeavour: a doorbell which can identify you by your scent, skin texture, fingerprints, eyes, voice, walk, and more.
While Amazon acquired the doorbell camera company Ring in 2018 – which originally functioned as a standard doorbell and security camera – it has recently registered 17 new patents for the service. Based on the patents, the service may soon be able to identify "suspicious" people by recognising numerous details about them using biometric-recognition softwares – which is mentioned in all but one of the filings.
Otherwise, the patents depict a system where every Ring product in a neighbourhood is synced together, so that they can work together to create composite images of "suspicious" people and can lock all neighbourhood doors if one is spotted.
One patent in particular mentions a "neighbourhood alert system", where users can send photos and videos to other neighbours when something annoying or nerve wracking occurs – prompting surrounding doorbell cameras to start recording. From this, the app will piece together "a series of 'storyboard' images for activity taking place across the fields of view of multiple cameras".
A different feature, registered in 2019, suggests the systems will use facial recognition to track patterns of "suspicious activity", although Amazon has denied any usage of the technology. "Ring does not have facial recognition technology nor biometrics in any of its devices or services," a company spokesperson said in a statement. "Patents filed or granted do not necessarily reflect products and services that are in development."
In 2020, however, Amazon software engineer Max Eliaser wrote a letter to his management. This product is "simply not compatible with a free society", he said – referring to the omnipresent surveillance network which the products have built.
Earlier this year, the company urged users to "respect their neighbours' privacy, and comply with any applicable laws when using their Ring device", after a British court ruled that one user breached data laws.
According to Business Insider, Ring is currently partnered with 1,963 police departments and 383 fire departments across the US. Further, authorities are able to request Ring footage from users without requiring a warrant – meaning any added biometric features could easily be used to gather information about customers and people out in public.
Otherwise, some activists and scholars have shared concerns of racial and gendered biases affecting the technology’s usage. Speaking to The Guardian, Rahim Kurwa, a professor of criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, argued that "neighbourhood surveillance platforms… perpetuate a much longer history of the policing of race in residential space."
Please go to Dazed to read more.
December 16, 2021 | By Hannah Bertolino
At this point, it’s not shocking to hear that tech billionaires have pioneered the next dystopian surveillance product. Just last week, Tesla's Elon Musk announced that his microchips will be ready for human brain implantation in 2022, and in October, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg revealed his ploy to expand into the digital metaverse, where users can exist virtually in an interactive environment.
In case that wasn't enough, Amazon's Jeff Bezos' has announced his own nightmarish endeavour: a doorbell which can identify you by your scent, skin texture, fingerprints, eyes, voice, walk, and more.
While Amazon acquired the doorbell camera company Ring in 2018 – which originally functioned as a standard doorbell and security camera – it has recently registered 17 new patents for the service. Based on the patents, the service may soon be able to identify "suspicious" people by recognising numerous details about them using biometric-recognition softwares – which is mentioned in all but one of the filings.
Otherwise, the patents depict a system where every Ring product in a neighbourhood is synced together, so that they can work together to create composite images of "suspicious" people and can lock all neighbourhood doors if one is spotted.
One patent in particular mentions a "neighbourhood alert system", where users can send photos and videos to other neighbours when something annoying or nerve wracking occurs – prompting surrounding doorbell cameras to start recording. From this, the app will piece together "a series of 'storyboard' images for activity taking place across the fields of view of multiple cameras".
A different feature, registered in 2019, suggests the systems will use facial recognition to track patterns of "suspicious activity", although Amazon has denied any usage of the technology. "Ring does not have facial recognition technology nor biometrics in any of its devices or services," a company spokesperson said in a statement. "Patents filed or granted do not necessarily reflect products and services that are in development."
In 2020, however, Amazon software engineer Max Eliaser wrote a letter to his management. This product is "simply not compatible with a free society", he said – referring to the omnipresent surveillance network which the products have built.
Earlier this year, the company urged users to "respect their neighbours' privacy, and comply with any applicable laws when using their Ring device", after a British court ruled that one user breached data laws.
According to Business Insider, Ring is currently partnered with 1,963 police departments and 383 fire departments across the US. Further, authorities are able to request Ring footage from users without requiring a warrant – meaning any added biometric features could easily be used to gather information about customers and people out in public.
Otherwise, some activists and scholars have shared concerns of racial and gendered biases affecting the technology’s usage. Speaking to The Guardian, Rahim Kurwa, a professor of criminology, law and justice at the University of Illinois at Chicago, argued that "neighbourhood surveillance platforms… perpetuate a much longer history of the policing of race in residential space."
Please go to Dazed to read more.
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Editor's note: Human beings presently have a massive deficit in moral and ethical limits in the individual who are woefully unprepared for what these people are creating with this technology. The ever present urge to magnify themselves to become megalomaniacs as extensions of their personalities/egos into this technology. What is it? More power? More money? The ego overrides rationalism projecting their creations through these robots as the greatest invention ever created. Egos will override all other rational considerations of their robotic creations and there is nothing to stop or slow this technology down in order to rethink the potentially dangerous consequences.
Quantum physicist explains why "I Am" is the name of God:
Related:
From Man to Human to Transhuman --- Rebel Now
Editor's note: Human beings presently have a massive deficit in moral and ethical limits in the individual who are woefully unprepared for what these people are creating with this technology. The ever present urge to magnify themselves to become megalomaniacs as extensions of their personalities/egos into this technology. What is it? More power? More money? The ego overrides rationalism projecting their creations through these robots as the greatest invention ever created. Egos will override all other rational considerations of their robotic creations and there is nothing to stop or slow this technology down in order to rethink the potentially dangerous consequences.
Quantum physicist explains why "I Am" is the name of God:
Related:
From Man to Human to Transhuman --- Rebel Now
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