Military Chiefs say we need Robots and A.I. NOW!! Should we get them?

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  • It's been a massive Brexit week with debate of the repeal bill going into committee stage, so you would be forgiven for thinking that the politicians were only concerned with that and nothing else. You'd be wrong!

    I've got about 50 notes of 50 potential stories to write about just from this week, and I probably won't get around to 99% of them, but I could not let this story slip by, it's too important.

    I will expand on the details later after I've watched a recording of it, but on Wednesday the defence committee met to discuss the threats facing this country in the next ten years or so, this is part of the current SDR (Strategic Defence Review).

    The bit that made me took notice, was a panel of our former top military chiefs talking about robots and AI (artificial intelligence). Basically they said that the human element of warfare needs to be removed for the explicit reason that the enemy will. They went on to say that if our soldiers are engaged in warfare and they are up against enemy robots powered by AI, by the time our people have made the decision to engage he enemy, they'll already be dead. The enemy's AI will make decisions instantly, far quicker than a human mind can.

    This panel unilaterally agreed that we need robots powered by AI and we need it now.

    This sounds like something from the Terminator films, but they were deadly serious. They say it needs regulation, but they think our military will be at a significant disadvantage if we do not go down this road. DO you agree with them?

    I will post quotes later, but as I've not seen a article on this from our Brexit obsessed media on this, I thought I would post this brief summary here.

    There is a general thread on AI and robots here as well as other topics on this subject on this site.

  • Follow link for pictures, full story and video.

  • The Chinese and Russians have already "played" at knocking out satellites, take them out and you lose the links to the robots making them useless, or they could simply be hacked. But as I said in my original post in this thread, the the defence chiefs said we must go down this route because the Russians and Chinese are.

    Personally, I think it would be a good idea to build a few thousand tanks and planes and ensures there is no computers in them or other electronics. Make them as strong and as good as possible, with good weapons, but leave out all the gadgets. If the enemy has robotic armies and you take our their comms and you have conventional forces, you win.

  • Follow link for pictures, full story and video.

    As the article says, one of the primary things they want to do with the tech is to use robot vehicles to resupply, or put them on the front line in front of the troops as a means of protection and a force multiplier.

    I don't think they will become the primary battlefield weapons of choice in our lifetimes, but who knows. The army "source" believes it could be the end of the tank, we'll see.

    You can imagine scenarios in the future like we had in Helmand in Afghanistan, where if a similar situations were to occur, we could send robots and keep our troops safe in the bases. But it all comes to cost and what is more important, human life or money. If a jeep gets blown up by a roadside IED, the human cost is terrible, but the monetary cost is trivial. If a robotic jeep gets destroyed, the human cost is zero, but the financial cost is probably millions just for one little vehicle.

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