Re: Nanotech Super-soldier articles etc.

From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Tue Jan 28 2003 - 05:08:30 MST


On Tue, Jan 28, 2003 at 09:45:20AM +0100, Max M wrote:
> Saddam is busy creating ABC weapons when he really should develop
> inexpensive unmanned drones that could automatically fight incomming
> jet fighters. Relying on distributed intelligence.
...
> But perhaps a dictator like him, by nature have difficulties in
> imagening distributed systems being efficient.

Could be it, but I doubt it is the main reason. The real problem
IMHO that distributed intelligence is so ¤&%/(# hard? It is easy
to get nice swarms in computer models, but even to get them to
work on lab robots is a hassle, and producing military robots
(even simple one's that just tries to get into jet engine air
intakes) is tricky and requires quite a bit of electronics. Which
as a rule dictatorships are bad at, and have to import at high
prices.

I could imagine that things are going to get real interesting when
smaller groups start to build distributed intelligence systems.
Just imagine the brinistas spreading P2P gnatbots across
Washington or Brussels, setting up realtime coverage of where
every official is and with whom...

-- 
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Anders Sandberg                                      Towards Ascension!
asa@nada.kth.se                            http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/
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