The machines are coming ;-)

[Egeides]

Well, it seems like robots are becoming serious now. With its nice possibilities as nightmarish visions, some robots are getting prepared to go on the battlefield and it seems Iraq may be their test. And NO they do not just carry luggage or are a soldier add-on: they really shoot and seem to act autonomously.

http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65885,00.html

Some of it here:

"2-foot-six-inch robot rolling around the carpeted floor on twin treads, an M249 machine gun cradled in its mechanical grip" were "ready to send it a month ago" and director of Globalsecurity.org sayd it is "a premonition of things to come".

So, what's next in the robo-soldier world?

[Tako]

damn that's sick, think they are going to take over the world and then place a computer in charge of us?

[Egeides]

Well I wonder how anyone could conclude from so little information about... the future. Getting conclusions on such subjects is almost like trying to conclude on what you're going to eat for breakfast in exactly 1000 days. These robots are simply as men, except more efficient and with no body-bag if they die, and demanding only money to produce. Quite a difference still.

And besides, robots may even get their fuel from dead corpses: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,66036,00.html?tw=wn_tophead_2

That's it, we're in a sci fi novel :D

[Emperor Harkonnen]

I do not believe what we are hearing. if this will be reality it will at least not be in the next 10 years.

they keep writing about new stuff in magazines, on the internett and in newspapers, new incredible stuff. but will we ever see them?

I remember reading in a National Geographic magazine from 1984 that a manned shuttle will reach Mars in 2001. but did it happen? no! we are 20 years into the future, and I have not even seen any assumptions for a trip to Mars. >:(

[Dante]

You haven't? We have...

[Moose212]

How about this one. :O

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&ncid=716&e=9&u=/ap/20041215/ap_on_bi_ge/japan_honda_robot

Thou shall not create a machine in the likeness of man.

Jihad!

[Emperor Harkonnen]

You haven't? We have...

sure, but that was not the point about my post, so why comment on it.

[Dante]

I felt like it.  :P

People have always overestimated the progress of technology. The Victorians thought they'd be on the moon by 1910; and during the cold war all sorts of things were put forward. We'll get there in time, just not so soon. We'll get to Mars eventually. This new robot is just a sign that technology is becoming more advanced.

[Caid Ivik]

Would be good as a pet  ;D

[Tako]

sick as it may sound there is one possebillety that science may leap forward and that would be a next world war or something simular.

During WO I adn II there whare made some interesting discovery's (not always bad) adn also in its aftermath, so ... to war??? then??

I know that the discovery's came whit a lot of pain and suffring from inocent people but that is not the point I am making here (just as a note)

[Egeides]

Would be good as a pet

[TMA_1]

this isnt sick, I mean roboticsin the military have been around for awhile now. I mean the machines with the same capabilities have been in the US military for more than a few years, now they are just sticking guns onto them and programming them a bit differently. I think people are going a bit overboard with this stuff.lol

[SpiceGuid]

i think to kill or not to kill should be the responsability of a human.

anyway, it's said the pictured robots are radio-controlled, so nothing really revolutionary.

[Dante]

i think to kill or not to kill should be the responsability of a human.

Why? Robots don't have ethics and human ethics are, to put it mildly, unreliable.

[SpiceGuid]

humans are unreliable but when they are abusive at least they can be sanctionned...

[Dante]

Sanctioned? What do you mean, exactly?

[Khan]

How do you punish a robot, I think is where he is going.