Emily just had another birthday and we thought a little look back at both Joel and Emily would be a very poetic way to celebrate our Poetry Extravaganza for August.

We Are On The Edge

Sending robots to war

Sidebar

Before we discuss this months topic we will begin with a short contribution to this months theme - POETRY. This poetry was generated by robots.

Terminators: Robot warriors are no longer scy-fy.

43 countries are developing a military robot, including Russia and China. And it is fast becoming an arms race. 

12,000 lethal military robots are currently deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. Smart missiles, rolling robots, and flying drones currently controlled by humans, are being used on the battlefield, more every day. They can fly, they can swim, they can spit out 550 high-explosive shells a minute. Some other robots currently in production are the Wasp, a tiny flying spy, the Cormorant and PANDA, water born robots, currently used to track pirates. There are also sentry robots such as SGRA1 patrolling in pillbox's on the Gaza border.

In an initial test the auto-loading feature of the SWORD jammed and began spinning in a 360 degree arc. This software glitch has been corrected and we have moved on. However, these robotic warriors still can't tell the difference between an apple and a watermelon, or for that matter the difference between a Italian solder and a child. As these robots are being perfected companies such as Qinetiq have humanoid military robots in the pipeline

The deployment of these robots raises fears about what will happen when increasingly advanced military robots become autonomous and able to make decisions on their own. Most robot soldiers are operated by humans who is responsible for each move. One U.S. military proposal clearly states: "Fully autonomous engagement without human intervention should be considered, both lethal and non-lethal." But what happens when humans are taken out of the loop, and robots are left to make decisions, like who to kill or what to bomb, on their own?

Effectiveness of the robots

Eleven out of the top 20 Taliban leaders have been killed by robot drones. But how many innocent people have been killed in the process? We are experimenting to see whether we can embed the laws of war and the rules of engagement into an autonomous robot soldier. The impetus to do this is political.

Making robot warriors autonomous

To understand the process that will lead us to autonomous robots we need some background.

Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech works with Pentagon technology and is in the first stages of developing an "ethical governor," a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire. Arkin's ethical governor is currently planned for a traditional war where civilians have been evacuated from the war zone and anyone pointing a weapon at U.S./allied troops can be considered a target. This program also includes the use of robots who will act as multi-robot pursuit systems.

Arkin's challenge is to translate the 150-plus years of codified, written military law into terms that robots can understand and interpret themselves. In many ways, creating an independent war robot is easier than many other types of artificial intelligence because the laws of war have existed for over 150 years and are clearly stated in treaties. "We tell soldiers what is right and wrong," said Arkin. "We don't allow soldiers to develop ethics on their own." So why not robots.

A bottom-up approach, where robots learn the rules of war and make their own judgment is a better scenario, in the opinion of some experts. The problem with the bottom-up approach is that the technology doesn't yet exist, and likely won't for another 50 years

The beginning of robots

Robotics is a branch of engineering and began as a concept in the 1940's. In 1958 the first industrial robot was constructed by Engelberger, who called his robot "Unimate". Technologists of the 1950s appropriated the term robot to refer to machines controlled by programs. the current definition of robots states that robots exhibit three key elements:

• programmability, implying computational or symbol- manipulative capabilities that a designer can combine as desired (a robot is a computer);
• mechanical capability, enabling it to act on its environment rather than merely function as a data processing or computational device (a robot is a machine); and
• flexibility, in that it can operate using a range of programs and manipulate and transport materials in a variety of ways.

Using this definition we can define a robot as either a computer- enhanced machine or as a computer with sophisticated input/output devices.

Three laws of robotics

The Three Laws are a set of three rules which almost all positronic robots must obey. Positrnic robots are assumed to have brains that are central computers for robots and, in some unspecified way, to provide it with a form of consciousness recognizable to humans. The three laws, defined by Isaac Asimov, are stated as follows:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In 1950 an additional law, the Zeroth law, which states a robot may not injure humanity, or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm. This introduces the term humanity.

The Impact of robots

Robots offers us benefits such as high reliability, accuracy, and speed of operation and low costs of computerized machines resulting in high productivity.This lets humans avoid mundane work and exposure to dangerous situations. Robots can be used in hostile and dangerous places.

However, there are consequences. Robots might directly or indirectly harm humans or property. The damage could be accidental or result from human instructions. Indirect harm could happen to human workers, since the application of robots generally results in job redefinition and sometimes in job loss.

During the 1980s, the scope of information technology applications (robots) and their impact on people increased dramatically. Control systems are examples of systems that already act directly and with great power in manufacturing applications. Consider computer integrated manufacturing, just- in- time logistics, and automated warehousing systems. Even data processing systems have become integrated into organizations' operations and control the ability of operations- level staff to integrate a machine's decisions and conclusions. Many of today's computer systems can be demonstrated to be robotic in nature.

Asimov's original laws (see above) provide that robots are to be slaves to humans (the second law). However, this role is over ridden by the higher-order first law, which precludes robots from injuring a human, either by their own autonomous action or by following a human's instructions. This stops them from continuing with a programmed activity when doing so would result in human injury. It also prevents their being used as a tool or accomplice in battery, murder, self- mutilation, or suicide.

The third and lowest level law creates a robotic survival instinct. This ensures that, in the absence of conflict with a higher order law, a robot will

• try to avoid its own destruction;
• defend itself against attack by another robot or robots;
• defend itself against attack by any human.

Since at this time robots are not God like and can fail in its efforts to save itself. In addition to being fallible, the first law ensures that the robot's survival instinct fails if self- defense would result in injury to any human. So, then how could robots defend themselves from destruction if attacked by a human? To successfully defend themselves against humans, they would have to be provided with sufficient speed and dexterity so as not to impose injuries to a human.

As a result of the second law, a robot would seem to be required to comply with a human order to not resist being destroyed or dismantled. As a result of the first rule the order to self- destruct does not have to be obeyed if obedience would cause harm to a human. In addition, a robot would generally not be prevented from seeking clarification of the order.

These apparent inconsistencies point out the laws' primary role as a literary device intended to support a series of stories about robot behavior.

Asimov's suggested a provision for building the Laws into a positronic brain circuitry to make sure that they are prevented from disobeying them. Because the laws are built in to the machine's design, it should not be possible for the robot to consider breaking them.

Experimenting with the laws

Over time the laws have been examined and experimented with. A first step towards building a robot soldier that could make the decision to kill a human on the battlefield. Some key topics include:

• The ability of a robot to distinguish robots from humans. It must be able to recognize an order and distinguish it from a request. It must "understand" the concept of its own existence, a capability that has eluded mankind, although it may be simpler for robots.
• How will a robot define injury and harm including the distinctions between death, mortal danger, and injury or harm that is not life-threatening? Also, there is psychological harm. Any robot given, or developing, an awareness of human feelings must evaluate injury and harm in psychological as well as physical terms.
• How will a robot is interpret the term human? This is critical because it could lead to a robot being manipulated, circumventing the first law. Also, it could be possible for robots to ultimately be defined as human. An example might be the nature of the argument that the prosthetization of humans leads inevitably to the humanization of robots.

Over time the first law has been extended from protecting individual humans to protecting humanity as a whole. This has been termed the Zeroth law. This placed humanity's interests above those of any individual while retaining a high value on individual human life. This law will lead future robots must seriously consider whether they can harm a human to save humanity.

This modification of the law has prevented a robot from modifying the laws at some time in the future. If a robot perceives a threat to mankind, because of the Zeroth law, it concludes, Humanity as a whole is more important than a single human being. There is a law that is greater than the First Law: A robot may not injure humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

The problems facing the development of robot warriors

The practicability of embedding some appropriate set of general laws into robotic designs. (redefining humanity)

Recognition of stakeholder interests

The Laws of Robotics do not designate any class of humans (not even a robot's owner) as more deserving of protection or obedience than another. Even though a human might establish this kind of a relationship by command, the laws give such a command no special status: any other human could reverse it.

The laws contrast with our ideas about a robot, whose owner is assumed to be its primary beneficiary. An organization shapes a robots design and use for its own benefit. During the last few decades users have been given greater consideration in terms of both the human- machine interface and participation in system development. But that trend has been justified by the better returns the organization can get from its information technology investment rather than by any idea that users are stakeholders with a legitimate voice in decision making.

In this era of information technology/robots, engineers need to consider:

• identification of stakeholders and how they are affected;
• prior consultation with stakeholders;
• quality assurance standards for design, manufacture, use, and maintenance;
• liability for harm resulting from either malfunction or use in conformance with the designer's intentions; and
• complaint- handling and dispute- resolution procedures.

Once any standards are defined, legal bodies throughout the world will need to establish enforcement procedures.

Because of this research the interests of people affected by modern robots have been gaining recognition. The impact of this trend is to move toward more global standards that will apply to major information technology applications.

Closed system versus open system thinking

Computer based systems no longer are made up of independent machines each serving a single location. The joining of computing with telecommunications has produced multi component systems designed to support all elements of a widely dispersed organization and functional integration increasingly occurs across corporate boundaries. Consider how personal computers are being used to time share calculating power for research.

When systems have multiple components, linkages to other systems, and sophisticated sensory and motor capabilities, the scope needed for understanding and resolving problems is much broader than for a simple hardware/software machine. Human activities must be perceived as part of the system. General systems thinking leads information technologists to recognize that relativity and change must he included. Complex systems must be able to adapt.

Blind acceptance of technological and other imperatives

A utilitarian society, such as the U.S. seldom challenges the presumption that what can be done should be done and tends to follow where the technological capabilities lead.

• Related tendencies include the economic imperative (what can be done more efficiently should be)
• The marketing imperative (any effective demand should be met). Recently another tendency
• The information imperative, has appeared. This includes the dominance of administrative efficiency, information richness, and rational decision making. However, the collection of personal data has become so pervasive that citizens and employees have begun to object.

The greater a technology's potential to promote change, the more carefully a society should consider the hidden effects of technology.

Human acceptance of robots

We tend to develop an affection for robots, particularly robots that resemble humans.

Nonhuman forms, such as conventional industrial robots and large, highly dispersed robotic systems (such as warehouse managers. ATMs, and EFT/POS systems) would seem less likely to gain our affection. However, several studies have found a high degree of identification by humans with computers, including systems that don't have robotic capabilities.

It seems that we must be continually reminded that the capabilities of hardware/software components are limited:

• they contain many inherent assumptions;
• they are not flexible enough to cope with all of the exceptions that show up;
• they do not adapt to changes in their environment;
• authority is not vested in hardware/ software components but rather in the humans who use them (consider the preditor plains).

Educational institutions and staff training programs must teach us and re-enforce these limitations. : The human machine interface must reflect them. Systems must be designed so that users are required to continually exercise their own expertise, and system output should not be phrased in a way that implies authority that we do not want them to have.

Human opposition to robots

Although we can't be sure how much opposition there will be to the advancement of robots, from the begriming they have been recognized as the most direct challenge to humans. Violent campaigns against robotics should not be surprising. Some humans could be turned off by robots, particularly robots with human like characteristics that are in some ways superior degrades humans.

On the other side corporations look at the possibility that product lines and markets might be threatened, reducing profits and risking the survival of corporations.

The structure of decision making

For 50 years it has been widely accepted that computers can do calculations better than humans. However, the value of machine decision making remains in question. Some decision processes are highly structured and can be resolved using algorithms operating on defined data with defined relationships.

Most structured decisions are good candidates for automation. The choice to automate must be made carefully because the automated decision process (algorithm, problem description. problem domain description, or analysis of empirical data) may later prove to be inappropriate for a particular type of decision.

Unstructured decision can be better handled by humans for one or more of the following reasons:

• humans have not yet worked out a suitable way to program (or teach) a machine how to make that type of decision;
• some relevant data cannot be communicated to the machine;
• "fuzzy" or "open textured" concepts or constructs are involved (being addressed with fuzzy logic);
• the decisions involve judgments that participants feel should not be made by machines on behalf of humans.

One important type of unstructured decision is problem diagnosis. How could we send a robot to find a flaw in a mechanism when we cannot give precise orders, since we know nothing about the flaw ourselves? "Find out what's wrong" is not an order you can give to a robot. Other issues arise when the data changes to rapidly to be diagnosed.

Delegating a machine any kind of decision that is less than fully structured invites errors and mishaps. Educated and trained humans may make more right decisions and/or fewer seriously wrong decisions than a machine. Using common sense, humans can recognize when conventional approaches and criteria do not apply, and they can introduce conscious value judgments.

The goal should be to achieve complementary intelligence.

Risk management

Even if subjected to laws or design guidelines, robotics inherently include risks to property as well as to humans. These risks must be managed; appropriate forms of risk avoidance and there needs to be plans for fallback recovery. Controls are needed to ensure that intrinsic laws must be operational at all times. Courtroom litigation may determine the actual amount of liability, but assigning legal responsibilities in advance will ensure that participants are careful..

Enhancements to codes of ethics

Associations of information technology professionals, such as the lEEE Computer Society, the Association for Computing Machinery, the British Computer Society, and the Australian Computer Society, are concerned with professional standards, and these standards almost always include a code of ethics. They provide guidance concerning how professionals should perform their work.

Existing codes of ethics need to be re-examined with a focus on developing technology. Codes generally fail to reflect the potential effects of computer- enhanced machines and the inadequacy of existing managerial, institutional, and legal processes for coping with inherent risks.

Asimov's Laws of Robotics may turn out to be appropriate for future robotic development and should continue to be used as a guide. The freedom of fiction enabled Asimov to project the laws into many future scenarios; in so doing, he uncovered issues that will probably arise someday in real- world situations.

Key definitions

Human

Being human is being a character; if you have some specific character you are human otherwise you are not. What characters? As far as characters are concerned it’s not our structure or physical appearance that makes us human, it is a humane characteristic, attribute, or act:

• what we think
• what we do
• what we wish to do
• how we express ourselves

The mix of all these qualities makes a character, which is the only standard of our humanity.

Humanity

According to some people (particularly those associated with the military) the definition of humanity changes with time and conditions, such as war, an earthquake or flood, a funeral etc. However, if we really think about it we can find a permanent definition of humanity, which never changes.

One definition that is commonly accepted is: “Humanity is character possessed by a person which causes maximum benefit to the person himself with minimum harm (or maximum benefit if possible) to others.”

The industrial military complex tends toward a definition resulting from the term crimes against humanity has come to mean anything atrocious committed on a large scale. This is not, however, the original meaning. The term originated in the 1907 Hague Convention preamble, which codified the customary law of armed conflict. This codification was based on existing State practices that derived from those values and principles deemed to constitute the “laws of humanity,” as reflected throughout history in different cultures.

Summary

It will be up to you to imagine how the future of military robots will unfold. Should we be afraid, very afraid? If you believe that the industrial-military complex (banking included) has as much control as I do then you best practice saying "Yes, mister robot ... do i have your permission ..."

Field Trips

Robots at War

Making robots autonomous

Automated Killer Robots

Definitions of Crimes Against Humanity

Happy Trails,

B.S.

Dear Friends and Readers,

As if the storms weren't enough...

down at the docks
by Rory Nugent
ISBN 9780375420641

For some, non-fiction books can be dull and dry, presenting the facts to import knowledge and little more. down at the docks, a new book by Rory Nugent, is the antithesis. Nugent called New Bedford, Massachusetts, home for seventeen years and in 1988 returned to research the death of the docks. By this time the once alive and vibrant industrious fishing docks had fallen on hard times, given way to corruption, drugs and poverty.

Nugent himself, no stranger to boats and docks, having soloed four times across the Atlantic, knows first hand what to expect when storms hit and ships are damaged. He also knows what happens among the people on the docks. Because of his closeness to the subject, he quickly gained the confidence of strong, rough, watermen, willing to disclose problems on the waterfront that helped bring down the town.

Old dock regulars, beginning with Sword, still meet at the Harborside Cafe, a blue plate special greasy spoon, and confide secrets of the end of an era that has been replaced with fighting and scraping to make a few bucks. As if the storms weren't enough, the fighting among ocean territory and cutting of lobster pots, plus trying to dump your own boat and collect the insurance, makes it impossible to be a true fisherman anymore. How can any mariner make it? Details of intense storms, clearly and intensely written, allow the reader to be drawn into the bowels of the ships as they creak and groan, all to often sinking below the surface with one final burp.

The fishing industry began to die out through loss of fish, hurricane damage, cost of maintaining vessels and buildings ruined by fire and rotten wood. At the same time the clothing mills along the water front died, leaving empty spaces, unemployment and less need for ships to ply cloth around the world. This left many men with little to do and drugs took hold and money made through the shipment and trade of this commodity as well as illegal immigration, took hold.

An interesting, little known women's secret fishing organization, The Petticoat Society, had its beginning in the 1600's in Nantucett. The society eventually found a chapter in New Bedford. In the early years, women in fishing villages were to have nothing to do with the boats or trade. However, one particular day, Mary Coffin Starbuck told her husband a storm was coming and he needed to bring his boat ashore. He not only refused but told her to leave the house by the time he returned since he had disobeyed him. A northeaster slashed the entire coast, killing many, but sparing her husband. The result of her stance allowed her to be recognized as a woman 'to be reckoned with' and changes began to be made, including allowing women to be full shore crew members. Within this newly formed society many other, interesting and intriguing ideas took shape, causing quite a stir when the society was uncovered many years later in New Bedford.

By the end of this fascinating book, one has a much clearer understanding of why fishing is not only a dangerous occupation but one that is fraught with problems. Any waterfront town that is still functioning as an active fishing seaport is to be congratulated.