The Doom of Man

Conditions: Siberian Beach Party

The Enemy Advances

As the time approaches when our robot overlords will rule us all, or at least those who are left, it falls upon me to bring another update as to how far toward extinction we are. First:

On Monday, a number of prominent Nobel laureates, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa and former Polish president Lech Walesa, jointly issued a letter calling for a ban on these sorts of weapons: "It is unconscionable that human beings are expanding research and development of lethal machines that would be able to kill people without human intervention," the statement read.

Human Rights Watch (HRW), meanwhile, published a report, titled "Shaking the Foundation: The Human Implications of Killer Robots," also advocating a ban through an international treaty. “In policing, as well as war, human judgment is critically important to any decision to use a lethal weapon,” Steve Goose, HRW's arms division director, said in a press release. “Governments need to say no to fully autonomous weapons for any purpose and to preemptively ban them now, before it is too late.”

Killer robots are, in a sense, the next iteration of drones -- and the debate that surrounds their potential use will likely be as contentious. The idea of such technology evokes now-cliched images of a dystopian future, where Terminator-type shooting machines run amok among cowering humans.

Ahh, yes a cliched image. A foolish idea worthy more of bedtime stories than in important debates about our future. How silly of us to fear for the logical conclusion of artificially intelligent weapon systems. Seriously, the condescension that is always used when this topic comes up in the press is one of the main reasons why the robots will eventually win.

But Ronald Arkin, a roboticist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, sees it differently. Arkin will debate Sharkey in Geneva and is among a contingent of experts who believe that, far from what their nickname suggests, killer robots may help reduce collateral damage and loss of life in conflict situations. In the heat of battle, human action can lead to hideous atrocities. "It is not my belief that an unmanned system will be able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield," Arkin said in 2007. "But I am convinced that they can perform more ethically than human soldiers."

- washingtonpost.com

Oh of course they could! That’s not the issue! The point isn’t what good things they could do, the bloody point is what horribly bad things they could do!! There’s no point waxing pholosophical about all the great things a combat machine is capable of, all that does is waste time and cloud the issue. At least with human soldiers committing war crimes there’s a clear chain of command to blame.

The four days of discussions will focus on technological developments, the ethical and sociological questions that arise from the development and deployment of autonomous weapons, as well as the adequacy and legal challenges to international law and the possible impact on military operations, according to the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs (ODA).

The Geneva meeting has attracted record attendance by States, UN organizations, the International Committee of the Red Cross and non-governmental organisations, ODA said.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon took note of “killer robots” in his report on the Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict issued in November 2013, saying important questions have been raised as to the ability of such systems to operate in accordance with international humanitarian and human rights law.

“Is it morally acceptable to delegate decisions about the use of lethal force to such systems? If their use results in a war crime or serious human rights violation, who would be legally responsible? If responsibility cannot be determined as required by international law, is it legal or ethical to deploy such systems,?” he asked.

- un.org

Yes. Well. I suppose if it has to take worries over legal liability in order to get the issue into the limelight then, well at least it’s getting dragged out into the open. Legal misgivings are still misgivings, even if they’re not actually as important as human misgivings. The deathwatch continues.



Film Review: Godzilla

I am actually one of the few surviving fans of the old 1998 Godzilla film. I actually have it on DVD. Yes, they did actually put out a DVD. It was fun and big and fairly exciting. But the consensus is that the film was actually an abomination. Apparently it was in fact a terrible movie, entirely in the wrong tone and disrespectful to the big beast. In fact it was so bad that the filmmakers themselves apologised for it. Films don’t get much worse than that. Subsequently, after thoroughly poisoning the well, Hollywood stomped away from Godzilla, leaving it broken and bleeding in the mud. But nothing big can ever really die. There’s just too much money involved. So after giving it a decade or so to rest, Godzilla is back. But this time, things are very different. The tone is strictly serious and grim. It has a nice long slow build to it. And significantly, there’s more than just Godzilla for the puny humans to deal with, or run screaming from! In fact the film is just as much about another couple of monsters who have been awakened by nuclear testing and are attacking various cities. Godzilla actually awakens to take on these two monsters, with the humans doing their usual thing of getting in the way.

But the humans are portrayed pretty darn well, to start with at least. Bryan Cranston and Ken Wantanabe in particular do a great job of selling the horror and then madness that finding out such a secret would create. Then as the film builds up it’s over to a younger soldier guy caught up in the action. He happens to work in bomb disposal so he’s ideally placed to help with the mission of setting off a clockwork nuclear bomb that will hopefully knock all three monsters down. - It’s clockwork because one of the monsters is able to generate EMP blasts, which actually makes fighting them or even tracking them a difficult task.

So it all boils down to a final battle in San Francisco, and it is pretty great. Lots of buildings getting knocked down, people running for their lives, massive carnage, and one of the beasts lays a bunch of eggs for the humans to deal with too. And there is a bit of a thematic thing going on here too. Godzilla is basically presented as a gigantic force of nature, dormant until needed when it rises and fights to regain the balance of nature, set things right before going back to where it came from. There’s a palpable disdain the creature shows towards humans, in that it doesn’t really seem to like us much, but it’s busier with more important problems. I kind of like that. It’s not a perfect film though. The lead character is a bit of a bland and anonymous Dudley Do-right kind of guy. There’s some plot contrivances that are annoying – like the bomb disposal team forgetting to bring along any tools to help get the cover off the bomb. And the very first monster fight actually comes off as surprisingly fake and funny-looking, just like a couple of puppets in front of models. I suspect they did that on purpose actually, but it contrasts with all the serious stuff we’ve been building up to. However, at the end of the day this is as well-crafted and dramatic a Godzilla movie you are ever going to get, and it’s showing the monster in a new light that makes it much more of a character than I had suspected. The slow build delivers us to a terrific finale, and a happy ending. I’m glad we all decided to give the big guy another chance. Four bombs out of five.



- Peace out