Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Terminators are coming true?

I just read about a drone Helicopter the Navy has been using since October 2009 followed a drug running powerboat and helped a frigate capture the boat. Cool!

Drones seem to be ramping up quickly. UAV's, drones, call them what you will, they are here to stay. There are human controlled ones and fully automated ones. With GPS accuracy to a meter or so, they can take off, run their operation, and land by themselves.

In the future, combat missions will be increasingly supported by automated machines. Ground machines to carry supplies, airplanes to refuel or carry additional munitions, submarines to search and defend. Even trucking, UPS delivery, mail, you name it. It's cheaper to get rid of humans in the loop.

Space is like that too. What's the biggest cost to the International Space Station? Air, toilets, kitchens, water processing, and these systems break down more than all the scientific machines. Don't get me wrong, we need people up there. But it costs.

I don't worry yet as artificial intelligence is still a fancy dream. Though data can be searched and distilled amazingly fast these days, that's not thinking. That's filtering, finding a needle in a haystack. But once our forces are nearly automated, I foresee it being like the Terminator movies, don't you think?

No comments:

Post a Comment