Killer Robots

The Robotic Alliance Project. NASA gives an extensive list of competitions.

RoboSub is an exciting underwater robotics program in which teams of high school and college students from around the world design and build an Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (AUV). These vehicles are designed to autonomously navigate through a series of tasks. These tasks mimic ongoing research in Autonomous Underwater Systems.

2020 International RoboSub Competition: Details Coming Soon!

Fathom wrote: »

RoboSub killers?

Reminds me of ole movie: "The Enemy Below" (1957).

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

You need to watch Das Boot.

Indeed.

SlowBlowin wrote: »

The ratio of 1 in 5 politicians being a criminal is lower than I expected...:)

Depends on how you define criminal? Are we discussing suspected criminal activities, or arrests, or convictions?

Fathom wrote: »

The military will be first.

Killer Robots: Russia, US Oppose Treaty Negotiations.

Fathom wrote: »

Killer robot escalation?

Two large military industrial complexes (profit driven).

Midster wrote: »

Automated battle vehicles are being tested right now though, most are RC but there are some AI

Just a matter of time.

Midster wrote: »

Reducing the education of women!? Really!? And you think that might be the answer!? Wtf!? Honestly!?

The women's education hypothesis stated above was:
"the higher the education of women, the lower the birth rate." Demographically, if you increase the education of women, they tend to have fewer children, and a population that exhibits highly educated women tends to approach zero population growth rate, and in many cases below replacement rate and population decline.

Midster wrote: »

But what would you offer as a solution?

The population growth problem is quite complex, without any silver bullet solutions. Strategically, there needs to be a system of interventions, especially for lesser developed countries (LDC) where birth rates tend to be higher than replacement rates. Rather than the use of force, win-win solutions are needed, where LDCs want to accept changes to reduce population, perhaps as a byproduct of beneficial interventions. Furthermore, it is not my areas of research interest or experience, consequently there are others more qualified than I to answer your questions. Given this disclaimer, I will contribute to our discussions in some small way.

Some past LDC sliver bullet interventions have been self-defeating, and have contributed to LDC population growth. For example, McFall's Paradox suggests problems, although often debated and criticised. People are starving in parts of the world. Starving people tend to exhibit subfecundity, or a reduced ability to have live births. The many feed the starving interventions (e.g., "Feed the Children," etc.), although compassionate, may produce unintended consequences. Feeding the starving increases fecundity or the ability to have more children, which in turn produces more mouths to feed and potentially more starvation, if the feeding programmes do not escalate by offering more food than before. Not only does the additional outside food interventions increase populations, but they also compete with, and may financially depress the existing LDC agriculture, to where many domestic farms may fail, creating even a larger need for outside food to feed the increased starving population. Additionally, there have been instances of corruption in outside food supply chains, where some LDC government officials may dip into the food flow and black market sell this food to enrich themselves. Agree or disagree with McFall's Paradox, one point that emerges from this discussion: There are no simple silver bullet solutions to complex population problems.

The Core Periphery Model developed in 1963 by John Friedmann, and further elaborated by Immanuel Wallerstein's world-systems theory in the 1980s suggested that the core of rich, developed nations may not be interested in developing the LDC periphery nations beyond a certain point, preserving low labour costs, reduced regulation, and more profits for rich core nations. Surplus LDC populations tend to keep costs down, and allow for easy layoffs when business cycles decline, and cheap labour additions when business cycles improve. Where highly educated nations tend to have fewer children, lesser developed nations have more, along with a cheap source of labour, so where are the profit incentives of core, rich nations to completely share their education, technology, and vast financial resources beyond a certain developmental level for the more populous LDCs? Yet more theories to debate and argue about.

Of course, if LDC populations continue to expand without concomitant advancements in education, finance, technology, and agricultural development, there may be revolutions, wars, or wealth adjustments per Will and Ariel Durant in their Lessons of History. And such threats of war may motivate the rich core nations to expand the development of killer robots to defend themselves, rather than fix the problems of expanding world populations.

Just my 2-euros worth, after way too much coffee!

Midster wrote: »

Heres a good question, why is it the better technology seems to get, our working lives don’t seem to get any easier

Anecdotally speaking, I am not sure this would apply to my work which often involves numbers crunching of big data sets. Advancing computer hardware and software has made my work more efficient, effective, and profitable, allowing for many relaxed smiles at offsite javahouse meetings of my research teams.