PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE

Page 144

THE TERMINATOR

It is seemingly important to the Pentagon that the operator should not have to come into contact with the person being chased down by the machines. The description continues: “The software should maintain awareness of lineof-sight, as well as communication and sensor limits. It will be necessary to determine an appropriate sensor suite that can reliably detect human presence and is suitable for implementation on small robotic platforms.” Paul Marks at The New Scientist pointed out such proposals are somewhat concerning, because they inevitably will be adapted for domestic purposes such as crowd control. “…how long before we see packs of droids hunting down pesky demonstrators with paralysing weapons? Or could the packs even be lethally armed?” Marks asks. Marks interviewed Steve Wright, an expert on police and military technologies, from Leeds Metropolitan University, who commented: “The giveaway here is the phrase ‘a noncooperative human subject’. What we have here are the beginnings of something designed to enable robots to hunt down humans like a pack of dogs. Once the software is perfected we can reasonably anticipate that they will become autonomous and become armed. We can also expect such systems to be equipped with human detection and tracking devices including sensors which detect human breath and the radio waves associated with a human heart beat. These are technologies already developed.”

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WHO TO WHEN T WHERE THEM.


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