HELIOLITH

It’s well-known that during wartime down-time, U.S. soldiers sometimes play first-person-shooter games like Halo on Xbox or PS2 consoles. It has even been said that these games help with in-the-field shooting accuracy (as well as helping surgeons’ accuracy during surgery). I’ve always hoped somehow we could get political leaders to challenge each other to virtual wars. Yet our technology is advancing so much faster than our humanity toward others.

Years ahead of the massive robot-warfare military operations planned by the Pentagon and being developed by giants like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics Corp., they are now ready to send some 18 robotic killing units to Iraq.

Running on lithium ion batteries, it can operate for 1 to 4 hours at a time, depending on the mission. Operators work the robot using a 30-pound control unit which has two joysticks, a handful of buttons and a video screen. Quinn says that may eventually be replaced by a “Gameboy” type of controller hooked up to virtual reality goggles. [emphasis mine]

What’s next? Army recruiters making their rounds in the arcades for the high-scorers? Offering access to vigilantes on the internet so they can virtually participate tele-hunter style in the war they so fervently support? Of course what kind of patriot could argue with a tool to keep our soldiers out of harms way? Oh wait, isn’t that what pacifists have been trying to do from the start?

Those in charge are quick to reassure us that the robots will simply follow orders and there is no declassified plan to create AI mechanisms for robotic autonomy. “For the foreseeable future, there always will be a person in the loop who makes the decision on friend or foe. That’s a hard problem to determine autonomously,” said [Jim] Lowrie, “president of Perceptek Inc., a Littleton, Colo., firm that is developing robotics systems for the military.”

Indeed.

That’s a difficult for our soldiers too, not to mention the president.

from salon.com via Slashdot .
(Image links to defensereview.com’s report on the subject)