[Tyler]

Robot future poses hard questions

Scientists express concerns over the use of autonomous decision-making robots, particularly for military use.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/technology/6583893.stm

[Freddy]

The above news item was just on the televised British news as well and it was quite interesting.

This is the first time I have seen the issue of machine rights and the kind of problems encountered when introducing machine life into people's daily lives covered by the general news.   Those are exactly the kind of things we have been discussing for the past two years on this forum.

They also showed some footage of robotic guards that defend military perimeters.  If you remember the film Aliens then they are just like the automatic gun posts they set up when they try to make themselves a stronghold to defend against the aliens.  These real machines are straight out of the film, so yet again Sci-Fi predicts the future.

Adding to this there is more on the robotic gun placements here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4425689.stm

No images, but to all intents and purposes they are just like in the film.  Bizarre and frightening perhaps but nevertheless now a reality.

But the main emphasis of the story was on the problems with integrating robots into daily life and the machine rights issues.  If you go to look at the story Tyler posted then there are some more links to related stories on the right hand side of the column...

On a lighter note I think Tyler has integrated quite well with daily life here on the forum.  Lets hope the same thing happens with more advanced machines and the like.