Video Games and War

Oh, BloggingheadsTV, what did we do without you? Other than, you know, not listening in on webcam conversations between stuffy academics and self-important policy wonks.

Here's a conversation between Yale psychology professor Paul Bloom and "philosopher of the mind" Tamar Szabo Gendler on the neuropsychology of video games, and the eternal question of whether video games are corrupting our morals: (note: a few times in the video they mention "alief", which is Gendler's term for conditioned responses, those things you know about the world without being conscious of believing them)

Gendler argues that in most cases, the physical actions portrayed in video games are so alien to the physical experience of playing the game itself that it's hard to see how they could effectively familiarize someone with the actual experience of firing a gun or throwing a punch. Bloom, a video game enthusiast playing devil's advocate, points out scenarios where the experience of playing a video game is very much like the real thing, such as firing a missile in a flight simulator game. Gendler takes the conversation in a completely different direction, so we don't get to hear them hash through what strikes me as a very valid point in this conversation: modern war is increasingly conducted by remote control. The control systems for a Reaper UAV or armed Talon robot look just like video games. They are video games, only with real people dying on the other end, and our video-game-raised youth are very, very good at them. I don't really have a conclusion. I just wish I could have heard their conversation on it. Thoughts?

The Little Warbot That Could

I wrote last week about Ember, iRobot's prototype for DARPA's LANdroid contract. PopSci has a profile up today, "Meet Ember, the Littlest Warbot". Cutest robot name ever. Someone needs to publish the children's book.

Robot In My Pocket

Along with the Department of Defense's mad scientist division at DARPA, our nation's military contractors also do their part to ensure that our future is filled with unimaginable terror. Household robot maker and military contractor iRobot makes robots that variously vacuum your rugs, clean out your gutters, disarm your IEDs, and invade your enemies' homes to riddle them with bullets. For now these functions are carried out by four specialized robots, but I'm sure they're working on the convergence piece.

They're also working on a cheap networked minibot named Ember to meet DARPA's LANdroid specs, seeking to create fleet of robots to disperse itself through a neighborhood, setting up a wireless network to transmit the information collected by whatever suite of sensors the user might choose to have installed. Ember is small and light, and iRobot hopes to make them robust enough to be hurled into action and cheap enough to be treated as disposable. As if I didn't have enough stuff to carry around in my cargo pockets.

The Three Laws and Then Some

Asimov had one critical failure in imagination when dreaming up his future worlds inhabited by robots, or maybe he was just giving humanity too much credit. He completely missed the possibility that the greatest initial demand for highly autonomous robots would come from the military. He may not have considered them, but the military is certainly not ignoring him. The Office of Naval Research has released the first full military report on the potential ethical considerations of using semi- and fully-autonomous robots in combat, "Autonomous Military Robotics: Risk, Ethics, and Design" (.pdf). It's fascinating, if slightly disconcerting, but it's an important topic. Congress has mandated that 1/3 of deep-strike aircraft be automated by 2010, and the same portion of ground vehicles by 2015. Whether we decide to allow a gun-toting robot to pull its own trigger, questions of robot ethics are important for more mundane 'bots, too. The first fully-autonomous ground vehicles will likely be transports for convoy operations. Just autonomous trucks. But how will the truck react if a child runs into the street? What if there are crowds on the sidewalks? It seems straightforward that robots would be programmed to be pure utilitarians; after all, we can expect a computer to successfully calculate the course of action leading to the least human suffering, at any rate far better than a human operator can. Then again, human cost can't be the only consideration: if autonomous trucks can safely be forced to crash simply by jumping in front of them, they wouldn't serve their purpose very well. Any fully-autnomous robot bigger than a Roomba might have to make a life-or-death decision; we need to be ready to face the implications of that.

Robot Awakening Watch: Pentagon Seeks Pack-Hunting Robot Contract

This via WIRED's Danger Room, the Pentagon has put out a call for bids to develop "a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject". And to think, just last night we were discussing a capacitor bullet for anti-robot warfare. Gotta get on that.

Welcome to the Future

Have robots clean your gutters!

I actually read a review of this in Popular Mechanics, apparently it doesn't actually work all that much better than just cleaning your gutters by hand, but it's still worth it for the sheer entertainment factor. I believe it.

The Day is Nigh

I used to joke that I wouldn't join the military until I could do so as the pilot of a GFRS (Giant Fighting Robot Suit). Granted, I slipped up on that promise and joined a bit too early, but I've remained excited by the prospect. Me and my buddies in CA even used to jokingly muse about the future Mech Corps and even invented a branch insignia (a sprocket Or on field Sable with crossed lightning bolt Argent and laser beam Crimson, if you can imagine). In any case, as this video shows, it's exciting times in the US military. Who knows, if I stick around long enough, I might just get a chance to reclass to mech pilot after all.