AI soldiers

Bernard Hughes (bjhughes@istar.ca)
Fri, 30 Oct 1998 15:28:08 -0330

Following up on the silicon brain story posted earlier, I came across another interesting article in the EEtimes

http://www.eetimes.com/story/OEG19981026S0015

This one is about a Raytheon project to build an artificial soldier topped off with the Cog head from MIT. The neural net system proposed is of a type that is new to me, in that it assumes that the information passed among neurons comes as a result of the temporal synchrony among signals. Anybody else come across that theory?

Building an autonomous, heavily armed soldier strikes me as a risky way to try out AI theory. A fixed place ABM system is one thing, but a general purpose killer robot seems like asking for trouble. If programming "do not harm humans" has some challenges, "kill all humans except for the friendly ones" seems fraught with peril. Reminds me of an old SF tale, I think called "I made you", in which a dying engineer is pinned down by the robot sentinel he built.

I'd vote for keeping these guys immobile unless you are *really* sure of your IFF programming. 

--
Bernard J Hughes   bernard@timedancer.com
Timedancer Systems http://www.timedancer.com
 -- Creative Laziness at its best --