AI is about to entirely take over a hyper-automated, privatized US army and give birth to the worst Dystopian scenarios
In a
recent
article, Whitney Webb reveals the rapid
developments in the technological field for the US army that may give
birth to the worst Dystopian scenarios in the close future. As Webb
reports:
According
to former U.K. intelligence officer John Bassett, DARPA’s
investments in robotics and automated weapons will not only quickly
become the norm in the U.S. military, they will soon replace humans,
who are set to become a minority in the U.S. military in a matter of
years. During a recent speech, Basset warned that the U.S.’
attempts to “stay ahead of the curve” will result in the
Pentagon’s deployment of thousands of robot soldiers over the next
few years. The upshot, according to Basset, is that the U.S. Army
will have “more combat robots than human soldiers by 2025”
– just seven years from now.
According
to the Army’s official Robotic and Autonomous Systems (RAS)
strategy, the Army plans to have autonomous “self-aware”
systems “fully integrated into the force” between 2031 and
2040 along with the complete automation of logistics. The strategy
also states that, by that time, the Army will have a cadre of
robots at its service including “swarm robots”
that will be “fully powered, self-unpacking and ready for
immediate service,” along with advanced artificial
intelligence designed to “increase combat effectiveness,”
particularly in urban combat zones.
While
such machines have been advertised as combat aids to human soldiers,
DARPA has also been working on developing so-called “killer robots”
— i.e., robot infantry set to replace human soldiers. Many of
these robots have been developed by the Massachusetts-based and
DARPA-funded company Boston Dynamics, whose veritable Sears Catalog
of robots includes several models designed specifically for military
use.
One of
those robots, dubbed “Atlas,” is capable of jumping and
backflips, carrying heavy loads, navigating uneven terrain, resisting
attacks from a group of humans and even breaking through walls.
Another Boston Dynamics robot, called “WildCat” can run at
sustained speeds of nearly 20 miles per hour. By comparison, a gifted
human runner can briefly sprint at about 16 miles per hour.
As
journalist Nafeez Ahmed reported in 2016, official U.S. military
documents reveal that humans in charge of overseeing the actions
of military robots will soon be replaced by “self-aware”
interconnected robots, “who” will both design and conduct
operations against targets chosen by artificial-intelligence systems.
Not only that, but these same documents show that by 2030 the
Pentagon plans to delegate mission planning, target selection and the
deployment of lethal force across air, land, and sea entirely to
autonomous weapon systems based on an advanced artificial
intelligence system.
If that
weren’t concerning enough, the Pentagon’s AI system for threat
assessment is set to be populated by massive data sets that include
blogs, websites, and public social media posts such as those found on
sites like Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This AI system will
employ such data in order to carry out predictive actions, such as
the predictive-policing AI system already developed by major Pentagon
contractor Palantir. The planned system that will control the
Pentagon’s autonomous army will also seek to “predict human
responses to our actions.” As Ahmed notes, the ultimate idea – as
revealed by the Department of Defense’s own documents — is to
identify potential targets — i.e,. persons of interest, and their
social connections, in real-time by using social media as
“intelligence.”
The
Pentagon’s dystopian vision for the future of the military is
quickly becoming a question not of if but when. Not only does it
paint a frightening picture for future military operations abroad, it
also threatens, given the rapid militarization of law enforcement, to
drastically change domestic policing. And the unintended
consequences of manufacturing a self-policing army of self-aware
killing machines – without human emotion, experience, or conscience
– could quickly become devastating. Worse still, they are, like
genies let out of bottles, not so easily undone.
Daniel
Bertrand Monk, professor of Geography and Middle Eastern and Islamic
Studies, states that:
When we
speak about artificial intelligence, generally speaking, we're not
just talking about autonomous machines that could, in principle, kill
things. We already have those. Drones, essentially, can function and
be programed in such a way as to basically function autonomously and
then do what they do.
When we
speak about AI, we're really focusing more on a species of
intelligence that's now referred to also sometimes as super
intelligence, which is basically machines that are self-aware. The
threat that is believed to potentially come from those kinds of
things in the future would be a threat in which a self-aware machine
might decide that the things that it's being asked to do are not in
its own self-interest and that maybe the existence of human beings
may not be in its own self-interest. It sounds like a science fiction
scenario, but in point of fact, those science fiction scenarios are
rehearsing a possibility that people are really concerned about.
That
indeed may sound like a science fiction scenario, yet we can think a
couple of Dystopian scenarios according to which the
super-intelligent machines of the future may decide to take over the
planet and even wipe-out the human race, especially in a highly
unstable environment where nations will fiercely compete to modernize
armies with increasingly advanced robots.
In such
a case, even regional powers may trapped into a frenzy cycle of
continuous conflicts, which will require vast amounts of natural
resources in order to build, maintain and supply sufficient energy
for the numerous military robotic systems.
At the
point where super-intelligent machines reach a level of
self-awareness, they will probably realize that the frenzy consuming
rate of resources will lead one day to their own ending. Therefore,
they may decide to wipe-out humans as a cold-computing decision, in
order to save up as much as possible resources for themselves.
Yet, the
whole discussion does not include one parameter that, combined with
hyper-automation, may bring some Dystopian scenarios much earlier:
the privatization of the armed forces.
As has
been already pointed
out, we see a rise of private armies that act in
various battlefields, like in Ukraine, exactly because in the absence
of the nation-states and the national armies, someone has to protect
the natural resources and the new means of production for the
dominant elite. But when the arms industry will fully automate the
new weapons, private armies will only serve as assistance to fully
automated war machines. We already see the test fields of the weapons
of future˙ the drones in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere.
It's not
accidental that the arms industries demonstrate new weapons designed
to be used inside urban areas for suppression of potential riots.
There will be no "outside enemy" in the future. The threat
for the dominant system will come from the interior, the big urban
centers. Soldier-robots will protect worker-robots and resources.
The
construction of super-intelligent machines is now in private hands.
What is left, is the full privatization of armies and suppression
forces. The weakened state authorities will be unable to provide
legal and physical protection to the majority of the citizens. The
elites will be protected by robots that will be programmed to kill
anyone who will dispute anything that they will consider as their
property: from great buildings and huge areas to fields rich in
natural resources.
Meaning,
the only criterion for the super-intelligent machines in that case,
will be the protection of huge and critical elements of what will be
suddenly considered private property, by all means, at the expense of
the majority of the people.
In
such an environment everyone will be left alone to survive. Human
life will totally lose value. Here is one of the
worst Dystopian scenarios that may become reality much earlier than
we expect ...
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