DARPA's Closer than ever to Man-hunting Capable Robot Cheetah

I would assume they'd want to make themselves not look like a threat, and thus not fan our paranoia. Murphy's law aside, not everyone's response to a threat is to return said threat in kind.

DARPA IS military. I'd assume their robots would be military minded. If the FBI or police were developing this, I'd feel fairly safe because they;d likely have a robo-cop style "protect the public" primary directive.

I'm baaaaaaack

It's not robots being too smart that worries me, so much as robots that are smart enough to go rogue but still too limited in intelligence to be reasoned with.

edited 6th Mar '12 7:37:18 PM by RTaco

Unless it was supposed to, I don't think a robot would have wants at all. Especially not the ones that we have; Wanting to survive and be free is not an integral part of being intelligent.

One thing I'd like to point out, though, as a biologist, the notion of robots and humans fighting each other does not make that much sense, depending on the robot. Now, a robot with fully integrated organic systems - which would really start to look more like a synthetic lifeform - that would be a threat. But if we end up going with this robotic cheetah design, there are some biological restrictions to consider.

Let's assume that it is the year 2060, and an experimental "hunter-seeker" robot gets loose from some DARPA lab. The robot has the following capabilities: it has an internal miniaturize 3-d printer that allows it to make copies of itself through robot division (think of how bacteria reproduce - the robot could consume the appropriate materials, grow longer, then divide in its center, with the two halves eventually forming two "adult" robots), it is both solar powered and can convert organics into biofuel to power its fuel cells, it has some sort of self-repair mechanism (maybe something along the lines of a self-sealing structure or the ability to replace broken parts by printing out fresh ones with its internal 3-d printer rather than nanites, mostly because I don't think nanites are going to be feasible by this century, apart from cybernetics on a cellular level in bacteria-based "cell factories") and it has physical prowess and brains similar to a large predatory cat.

Now, although it can consume organic materials to power its fuel cells, it must also consume metals in order to undergo reproductive division and repair itself. Immediately this restricts our proposed hunter-killer to urban settings, as finding metals in the wilderness would not really be feasible for our robot. But this means that, even in the worst case scenario, where the robots breed out of control and devour whole cities, they still wouldn't be able to last long out in the wilderness. So all we have to do is wait out in the woods for awhile until the hunter-killers run out of food and starve to death, because they can't live away from sources of metal forever. Not to mention these things are basically super-strong panthers, no more, no less - humans have guns, and orbital bombardment, and electromagnetic pulses - not to mention other robots. Hunter-killer-killers, if you will. We would win, in the end, maybe not even with much loss of life and limb. This same scenario also applies to zombies and Grey Goo.

Really the only feasible Robot Apocalypse would be a scenario in which we have automated everything to the point that an A.I. might be able to control all aspects of production - the thing is, such an A.I. would not compete directly with human beings, and therefore has little incentive to try and turn on us. After all, A.I. shouldn't need to drink our water or eat our food, and it has no use for our shelter - It would be like an elephant declaring war on frogs, despite the fact that elephants have no competitive reason to go after frogs. Not to mention that A.I. would benefit from symbiosis with humans moreso than competition - we could be like this little fish that pick bits of food off of the teeth of bigger fish to the A.I., if it even acknowledges our existence (why bother with physical space when you can create an infinite number of cyberspaces to explore?). The only time that I can see an A.I. being a bonafide threat to humans is if it decides we represent a threat to it in some way (likely through our own stupidity, like trying to pull its plug), or if it decides to be our caretaker and eliminate the Evils Of Free Will.

Now, I do see our hypothetical hunter-killer robot cheetahs being used as a Depopulation Bomb, though such a thing would be a true atrocity and hopefully will never come to pass.

As long as this comes in a HousePet version I am all for it. The household hunter-killer robot cheetah! For eatin' the mice what got into the attic. And tucking the wee ones into bed. ...and then running them down when they're teens and breaking curfew.

edited 6th Mar '12 8:21:32 PM by Bur

i. hear. a. sound.

This further supports my theory that DARPA is trying to turn America into some uber-synthetic civilization augmented by SCIENCE!

How long till this happens?

I just want one that can hunt down and kill mosquitoes.

I never played that videogame that you linked the clip from (I'm sure that this Helios fellow is the Big Bad and that unity angle is really just a ploy for turning us into mind slaves or ending The Evils of Free Will), but that actually sounds pretty nice. All for one, one for all - you never have to feel pain and suffering alone, you never have to hide your feelings from those you love, no more lies, no more prejudices...

edited 6th Mar '12 9:55:24 PM by MyGodItsFullofStars

Actually, Helios is the Big Good. He believes in free will. He doesn't want to assimilate, he wants to unify.

Hmm. Maybe DARPA is building up to this...

Which is kinda roughly what I said in a similar thread a while ago. DARPA and everyone else in the fields of cybernetics, robotics, artificial intelligence, systems analyis, (which you need to have a hope in hell of getting the next one to work), neural networks, locomotion (why limit robots to just legs, wheels, wings or hover propulsion? There are other ways of doing it that will be studied), nuclear physics, (both the crude fission energy reactors and whatever form of fusion they manage to get working will make excellent power sources, fission giving way to fusion as that tech matures, if not to provide reactors that are mounted on the vehicles/robots but to remotely power them), fuel cells, and a replacement for the frankly crappy battery power sources we now have are all galloping headlong towards something that would look like HELIOS.

Deus Ex, its sequel and its prequel did not come out of a vacuum. The game developers and programmers did a hell of a lot of talking to experts in those above fields and ones I know I missed because I simply did not think of them and just about every single one of the scientific and medical advance you saw in those games is a STATED GOAL for those experts. Every single one.

The only other alternative is Skynet decides to burn us all in nuclear fire first.

Man-hunting Capable Robot Cheetahs are the start. Maybe if we are clever we can convince Skynet that we are worth more to it as beings unto ourselves and more useful than slaves. That way we can live long enough as a species to achieve singularity with HELIOS.

Btw, first rule of science. Never rule anything out. Especially because you don't like it. Test the bastard first.

edited 6th Mar '12 11:36:46 PM by TamH70

never mind, dumb joke.

edited 7th Mar '12 1:46:26 PM by Joesolo

I'm baaaaaaack

When the OP referred to a robot capable of running down a human, I thought there would be a video of it actually pursuing a target. It's pretty fast, but how agile is it? Even on even terrain, would it be able to turn effectively enough to catch a human?

...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.

The article does suggest that ultimately that would be its purpose. It is a good point to bring up, though - alligators can sprint short distances faster than humans, but they have no momentum, and generally if they don't catch humans by surprise at the water's edge humans can run away.