He makes some good points, and it's interesting that soldiers who operate drones remotely (from the US) suffer higher rates of PTSD than soldiers actually in Iraq...but I felt like there was also a bit of dramatization, perhaps because he doesn't (seem to) understand robotics/AI very well. For example, he says that robots see an eighty year old woman in a wheelchair the same way they see a T80 tank - just "zeroes and ones". But that's like saying that humans see them the same way - just stimulus on rods and cones. I cringed at that.
What concerns me is the completely vacuous presentation, complete with mention of Zune, and hopeful talk that they won't commit war crimes, and maybe humans are the problem. If this is the quality of philosophical thinking going in to this problem, Nazism isn't far away.
This was a horrible talk.<p>Some points were just false (war tech is not open source, china & india don't make US bots), lots of the visuals were misleading.<p>Some of his points were overly emotional and would better fit a middle school debate than TED.
Watch "A Taste of Armageddon"<p><a href="http://www.cbs.com/classics/star_trek/video/video.php?cid=619493214&pid=d4jta0HHzzIp1bwgQ10osYAyZ03XIReJ&play=true" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbs.com/classics/star_trek/video/video.php?cid=61...</a><p><a href="http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/68706.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/episode/687...</a><p>Many months ago when I first learned that USAF and RAF pilots in Las Vegas, NV were flying armed drones in a war zone "worlds" away I knew we were not far from the scenario presented in that episode.<p>War needs to be painful, it needs to be bloody and costly otherwise there is no reason to stop fighting and no arguments against starting wars and "nuke from orbit" becomes the 1st/easiest/best answer to every problem.
Just the title statement iteself...<p>I always felt... why freaken robots, just have the leaders challange each other in a game of chess (Kasparov will be king) and basically we make rules based on technological levels, population, and other things, how many advisors you are allowed to have.<p>They just duke it out and after the one game war is over. Everyone accepts the outcome and the new overlords come to claim the country.<p>Its basically the same shit as war, except less death. We just need to figure out a way to incorporate nukes and suicide bombing into this game and a way to ensure propper resources are spent. After that why bother sending armies... Just send the chess team.