by Russ McSpadden / Earth First! News
In this episode: Your Algorithmic Overlords, An All Drone Band, Robot Sausage Parties, and Other Far Out Techno-Creepy Wonders in the Waning Years of the Anthropocene
KILLER ROBOT SAUSAGE PARTY
Back in May of this year a bunch of robotics experts, diplomats, engineers, politicians and lawyers, including a team from the U.S. State Department and delegations representing 50 nations, met up at the United Nations in Geneva to discuss the issue of Lethal Automated Weapon Systems (LAWS) — like the U.S. drones currently preying over tribal lands in Pakistan and bombing weddings in Yemen — and whether they should be banned from warfare. Eighteen experts presented their views at the conference.
All of the presenters were men.
Commenting on the deadly sausage party, Nobel Laureate Jody Williams had this to say: “Somehow it implies that women are not capable of being seriously involved in creating our own security in a secure world…To be blunt, I find it f**king offensive.”
At the debate, Georgia Tech robotics and kielbasa professor Ronald Arkin argued autonomous weapons “could outperform” human soldiers and suggested their development could “constitute a humanitarian effort.”
BIG DATA
Warning I: There is a good chance that you are being watched by Google, Facebook and/or the NSA. Yes, “they” are watching you, and by they of course, I mean algorithms.
You aren’t being watched by people as you may imagine. Data points, like what you “like” on Facebook, what terms you search on Google and the emails and phone calls collected by the NSA include far too much data for mere humans to process. You my friend are being watched by Big Data.
Warning II: Mind numbing, computer science number crunching definition coming your way.
Algorithms are a set of rules that define a sequence of operations, which are used to define the notion of decidability, which is used to determine membership in a set of formulas. And somewhere in there, whereby a list of data of an innumerably infinite set determines the nth member of that set, sit your data masters, collecting you and dissecting you for all your nth’s worth. Algorithms shape and control the flow and interpretation of information and in no small way shape and control your world. By clicking to read this article you’ve defined another nth in the infinite set for Big Data. But don’t get too worried, chances are, seeing as you are spending your valuable life online, your data set is boring and will remain in a dusty cloud vault or databank used only by Amazon.com from time to time to recommend movies you definitely don’t want to miss. If you data set isn’t boring, if you have some interesting flags, you should probably get off of the internet right now.
DRONES WITH RHYTHM, DRONES IN YOUR POCKETS
Drones spy on people. Drones kill people. But in a big step in drone public relations, KMel Robotics, producers of autonomous aerial photography drones for commercial use, has created the hexrotors, drones programmed to play music and they aren’t half bad. Here they will play a stirring cover rendition of “Thus Spake Zarathustra” for you.
If that isn’t your thing, U.S. Army engineers have whipped up a mini aerial surveillance drone that you can carry around in your pocket. Deployed, the device will allow soldiers to get a bird’s-eye view of their surroundings and scan a room before entering.
According to Army.mil:
“Prox Dynamics’ PD-100 Black Hornet, a palm-sized miniature helicopter weighing only 16 grams, has the ability to fly up to 20 minutes while providing real-time video via a digital data link from one of the three embedded cameras and operates remotely with GPS navigation. Tiny, electric propellers and motors make the device virtually undetectable to subjects under surveillance.
The size, weight and image-gathering capabilities of the system are promising advancements that fulfill the burgeoning requirement for an organic, squad-level ISR capability, but more work still needs to be done.”
ROBO-BED BUGS
Damnit! These microbots from SRI International and inspired by insects are tiny, fast, can run up the wall and coordinate amongst themselves. They have me itching already:
Be sure to stay tuned for Part VII of the Early History of the Robot Wars and check out Part I and Part II and Part III and Part IV and Part V to catch up on twitter controlled cyborgs, sext messages in your eyeballs and other totally true techno-creepy shit.
