Other cool stuff:

1-Billionth Scale USS Enterprise

Vanguard has some of my favorite reporting on global events and trends. This week they investigate robotic warriors, a subject which I have written about in the past. The only thing which was really news to me was the fully-automatic shotgun (3:20). Scary stuff.

Robotics confronts me continuously online, to the point where I cease to keep track. In terms of military equipment there is Ember, TROPHY, and the old news predator UAV, which I was unhappy to learn now advertises on Hulu (unable to find link, sorry).

More links abound. Seriously. I could do this all day.

Oh, and speaking of Hulu, there was an interview on the Colbert Report (last section) just the other day with Seth Shostak. At the very end of the interview (roughly 20:45), Dr. Shostak points out that the alien life that we make first contact with is likely to be “beyond-biology.” That is, that they’re likely to be AI.

I applaud the out of the box thinking on this one. Most sci-fi would have us in fist-fights with bipedal cat-people, and I think aliens have gotten a bit of a bad rep for it. (Apologies for picking on sci-fi, though. I do so love it.) But I really think that Shostak is wrong here. The biological systems that have evolved over the last three billion years are incredibly more complex and efficient than anything artificial, and I would even state that it is more efficient than anything we’re likely to develop in the next century.

Just for a second, imagine a nano-machine that communicated with other bots with a swarm network to create macroscopic effects, re-arrange in the swarm or repair itself. Now imagine that this machine not only could self-replicate, but could do so in a sustainable fashion with very little waste and even make small improvements upon itself. I just roughly described a biological cell.

Now, let me be very clear, computers and machinery are VERY useful, and capable of doing many things that organisms cannot. My point is simply that there are many things that both approaches cannot accomplish easily, and that the path of least resistance is in combining artifice with the vast amount of powerful organic machinery all around us. We already do this to an extent, where the newest microprocessors are created by applying the human brain in conjunction with present day computers, and where the newest human brains grow in an environment that is connected by technology. We cure disease and disability so that we can live happier lives, but as we do so we cease to exist as a purely biological species. And in that same way, I cannot believe that the machines of the future could not be at least partially organic.

The following (including music) is entirely the product of computer algorithms; a.k.a. procedurally generated content:

We’re getting closer to good brain-interfaces:

I think that the above video is the equivalent of watching a tech demo of cell phones in the late 1980s. Give it 20 years and it’ll be everywhere, give it 40 years and it’ll be unthinkable to control a computer with something other than the brain.

Other things that have been exiting for me:
* Exoplanets
* Exoskeletons
* Netbooks (more)

Take note: The collision between cellphones and personal computers is happening. A good amount of resistance to adopting netbooks probably comes from PC gaming (it certainly does for me) and lack of good cloud-based applications. These problems are being solved though, and I anticipate a full integration by 2015.

EDIT: Oh! I forgot this one!

“Dude. You’re teaching the machines to read. They’ll destroy us all!”

That was clearly in jest, but I’ve actually been fairly worried about future conflicts with machines. Seriously!
(Most of the following blog was also prompted by watching this TED talk. Warning: I re-state a lot of it.)

I do not, however, mean armed conflict with artificial minds, like the Terminator. I mean the slaughtering of noncombatants by robots controlled, at least in part, by other humans. This shouldn’t be in the least bit surprising. Humans have been using machines to kill each other for as long as they’ve been made, with the latest generation being fighter jets, helicopters and tanks. These are tools of war, and are incredibly powerful ones at that. I might even claim that these machines save lives by ending conflicts quickly and without putting their pilots in as much danger as the front lines might. That last argument is why I’m scared about the machine uprising.

In the early 20th century we predicted that robots would soon join us along with flying cars. Flying cars haven’t gotten here yet, but to a large degree robots have, they just aren’t in your living room (usually).

I find it a bit amusing, to be honest, the way Hollywood (and the game industry) seems fixated on the killer AI. While not an impossibility, the decision of an AI to kill off the only other sentient beings in contact with it seems both unlikely and quite far down the road. When the terminator shows up, he won’t be a humanoid AI with a heavy accent, he’ll be a real person controlling the equivalent of a 21st century tank — one without a driver.

Already in use for war are armed UAVs and their ground-treading counterparts, capable of killing without requiring a local pilot. DARPA is also hard at work pumping research funds into armored/robotic exoskeletons for the few humans that will need to be on the field. From medicine to reconnaissance to transport, robots undoubtedly will embed themselves in what it means for America to fight a war.

But the law of exponential growth (e.g. Moore’s law) means it won’t end there. Once we have exoskeletons, we’ll have the ability to make super-exoskeletons. Once the majority of front-line soldiers are machine it’ll become imperative that all of them are. Who needs human hands on the battlefield when metallic ones are superior? I’m not saying that battlefields will become devoid of human life, but that the roles of humans will become akin to people playing video games.

What becomes the target, in this future? What’s the point of it all? Do you aim for the factories, run by robots to make robots, or maybe the transport chains of autonomous vehicles delivering supplies to their mechanical pals. Do you aim for the HQ, and hope to track down something that could be anywhere on the planet? Do you attempt to outperform your opponent in the arms race and develop a virus or something equally devastating that lets you wipe out everything in one blow? Or do you aim for the population centers, and hope that a hostage city will force a surrender? The answer is none of the above, because modern warfare is dying alongside the newspaper industry as technology mercilessly reshapes our world.

The advance of technology has already majorly transformed the face of war twice by my count. The first was gunpowder, which destroyed the warrior caste, reshaped the fort and eventually made the idea of rigid formation laughable. The second was the atomic bomb,of which the consequences are not yet fully clear, but in my mind involve the development of proxy warfare. With proxy war comes terrorism, which I’ll define here as the unexpected killing of civilians by an organization (other than a nation) for the purposes of advancing an agenda.

If we think about how advancing robotics effects terrorism, this is where things really get ugly to me. The gift of an unmanned vehicle is that the human life of the pilot can be spared–but what if the UAV’s goal is to fly into a building? As the role of humans in war becomes that of chess players rather than pawns, it becomes largely possible for a single man to wage war. And as the fires of industry continue to burn, we’ll become increasingly more helpless to resist. The only solution will be to have no enemies or to turn to our computers to save us by hiding us away from an unseen threat that could be anywhere. It’s an awful lot like the possible future of biological weaponry. It’s an awful lot like the possible future of a black market for portable nuclear weapons.

Don’t fear the machine. Fear the maker.