June 2013
1 post
May 2013
1 post
April 2013
4 posts
“Could a machine do something that human soldiers throughout the centuries have rarely done, but sometimes do to very important effect — to refuse to follow orders? I’m convinced that, if these weapons are developed, they’re not just going to be deployed by the United States and Sweden, they’re going to be deployed by dictatorships. They’re going to be deployed by countries that primarily see them as a way of controlling domestic unrest and domestic opposition. I imagine a future Bashar Assad with an army of fully autonomous weapons thirty years from now, fifty years from now. We’ve seen in history that one limit on the ability of unscrupulous leaders to do terrible things to their people and to others is that human soldiers, their human enforcers, have certain limits. There are moments when they say no. And those are moments when those regimes fall. Robotic soldiers would never say no. And I’d like us not to go there.”
—Tom Malinowski (via azspot)
March 2013
2 posts
Play
February 2013
3 posts
January 2013
5 posts
December 2012
3 posts
“
“According to a translated page from the Chinese site Techweb, each robot costs between $20,000 to $25,000, which is over three times the average salary of one worker. However, amid international pressure, Foxconn continues to increase worker salaries with a 25 percent bump occurring earlier this year.”
:: programable robots are now cheaper than human beings ::
and within a few short years will be just as capable in handling the intricate tasks of electrical construction.
so my question i guess is – what then?
” —006 : programable robots are now cheaper than human beings – those jobs at the factory aren’t coming back « T.H.E.J.A.Y.M.O (via new-aesthetic)
The coming drone attack on America →
guardian.co.uk
People often ask me, in terms of my argument about “ten steps” that mark the descent to a police state or closed society, at what stage we are. I am sorry to say that with the importation of what will be tens of thousands of drones, by both US military and by commercial interests, into US airspace, with a specific mandate to engage in surveillance and with the capacity for weaponization – which is due to begin in earnest at the start of the new year – it means that the police state is now officially here.
In February of this year, Congress passed the FAA Reauthorization Act, with its provision to deploy fleets of drones domestically. Jennifer Lynch, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, notes that this followed a major lobbying effort, “a huge push by […] the defense sector” to promote the use of drones in American skies: 30,000 of them are expected to be in use by 2020, some as small as hummingbirds – meaning that you won’t necessarily see them, tracking your meeting with your fellow-activists, with your accountant or your congressman, or filming your cruising the bars or your assignation with your lover, as its video-gathering whirs.
Others will be as big as passenger planes. Business-friendly media stress their planned abundant use by corporations: police in Seattle have already deployed them.
