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Robotics

Ethical Killing Machines 785

Posted by kdawson from the i-for-one-welcome dept.
ubermiester writes "The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.' The researchers claim that these real-life terminators 'can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear. They can be built without anger or recklessness ... and they can be made invulnerable to ... "scenario fulfillment," which causes people to absorb new information more easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas.' Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."
IBM

DARPA's IBM-Led Neural Network Project Seeks To Imitate Brain 170

Posted by timothy from the cats-are-smarter-than-people dept.
An anonymous reader writes "According to an article in the BBC, IBM will lead an ambitious DARPA-funded project in 'cognitive computing.' According to Dharmendra Modha, the lead scientist on the project, '[t]he key idea of cognitive computing is to engineer mind-like intelligent machines by reverse engineering the structure, dynamics, function and behaviour of the brain.' The article continues, 'IBM will join five US universities in an ambitious effort to integrate what is known from real biological systems with the results of supercomputer simulations of neurons. The team will then aim to produce for the first time an electronic system that behaves as the simulations do. The longer-term goal is to create a system with the level of complexity of a cat's brain.'"

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