darpa wants killer robots that help build themselves. great. just great.

DARPA’s Self-Explanation Learning Framework (SELF) program “seeks to construct systems that can participate in their own construction.” Imagine a robot helping build itself. Who or what runs DARPA these days? Are there still humans in there? Things are moving too fast folks. Let’s look at the matchup for a sec: Human fetus – looks cute/scary/funny, probable source of clones and organs, otherwise defenseless. Robot fetus – smart, literally heartless, doesn’t need to be fed, can help complete itself. We’re doomed.

self_robot

The quote continues: ‘The system might know the requirements for various tasks in its repertoire, and it may try to perform those tasks to verify functionality.” So at the very least, these future robots could be thinking, sensing and moving about as they are being built, testing their parts. Which could include what, guns, missiles, lasers?

terminators

DARPA recently held a convention (pdf) of evil, traitorous mad scientists to help with SELF. Well I think that this is future future technology. First of all you’d either need to have versatile parts or a factory with all the parts that robots need for it to be able to build itself based on its programmed tasks. And second, I’m scared. Dammit why can’t DARPA setup programs that make us feel better?

[via The Register via Crave]

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categories: future tech robots strange + wonderful technology