The Killer Robot Takeover is Inevitable

[Music] there are basically two things which grow in parallel as society evolves right there is the the power of our technology and then there is the wisdom of us humans for how to manage the technology if technology grows faster than the wisdom it's kind of like going into kindergarten and giving my boys who had a nice to play with the robots are here some of them look a lot like us others not so much but robots are getting more mobile and smarter by the day thanks to the US military funding research and development in advanced robots and artificial intelligence some people are excited about our evolving relationship with the machines they're a great tool that humans can use to make their lives better make the world a safer place while others are deeply concerned about the dawn of intelligent killer robot military sphere that it does not want web life [Music] Virginia Tech the uncanny valley of Robotics due to its proximity to Washington DC Virginia Tech has become an incubator for military R&D and it's home to a handful of labs on the leading edge of robotics research our company's building the building right down the road there and the interim we're leasing this garage space my name is David Connor I'm a senior research scientist with Torque robotics who's behind you this is the Atlas robot that was developed by Boston Dynamics so evolution from the pet man project number of years ago this robot was developed specifically for the DARPA Robotics Challenge there are about seven of these in the world distributed to a number of teams competing developing their own software to operate the robot controller teams behind the country's top semi autonomous ground robots have come together for some friendly competition it's part of a multi-year contest hosted by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA the Pentagon's blue sky research lab this atlas here is one of the leaven robots competing in the finals this summer can it like grasp me or do something no no I can't grasp me but it crushed my bones yes the the general rule is you're not within 10 feet of the robot when the hydraulic pumps are almonds under control don't want this punching you there's sort of two side looking cameras a stereo camera pair these are just lights and then this is a laser rangefinder that spins around and gives you a point cloud of distances and then that's what we communicate back to the operator sort of looks like a terminator to get that a lot we get that a lot but this is a nice friendly humanoid rescue robot it is a machine and it will serve whatever purposes human operators send it to I've never stared into a robot's soul before now it's a bit unsettling and it leaves me with more than a few questions what's the end goal you know what what what sort of tasks does it do this robot was designed specifically to explore research topics and rescue robots we want to have a system that you could send into a disaster zone could make use of human tools that's why it's more of a humanoid form factor it could still probably hurt me though right you drove here in a machine that's more dangerous than this and then so it really is about the safety precautions we put in as we're operating it and then it's ultimately to the purpose that someone will put it - meanwhile across campus at the Trek lab we meet another robotics team gearing out for the DARPA challenge [Music] I'm Brian Lattimer and I'm one of the co advisors for the trek lab we do robotics and controls for robotic applications the center of the lab here is the robot assure we have about 20 graduate students undergraduate students working on this robot in all different aspects so we've actually fabricated this robot here and we have people working on the mechanical side as well as the software side helping the robot see the the world in front of it and manipulate real objects in the world like door handles and chairs or valves or things like this a lot of people do you see this and they think of an artificially intelligent Terminator that's gonna turn on everyone and bring about Skynet and that's the end of humanity the robot that we're developing is more like a c-3po that is doing actions that we don't want people to be involved Brian Latimer and the other Virginia Tech engineers competing in the DARPA challenge of seemingly the best intentions they're building tools they hope will help humanity DARPA and Google oh and fosston Dynamics the company that manufactures Atlas robots declined being interviewed on camera for this story according to DARPA the team valor which is developing all of the hardware and software force our robot in-house has received roughly 3.5 million dollars in DARPA funding since the beginning of the challenge in 2012 teams like the one from torque robotics which are developing just the software for their Atlas robots have each received upwards of 2.5 million dollars from DARPA since the challenge began in depending how the finals play out both of the Virginia Tech robot teams stand to win one of three cash prizes and of course prestige but some critics are skeptical about DARPA s-- interest in robots like Allison this is part of the Nobel Prize Oh at the fancy dinner these were on everybody's plate Jody Williams won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work in banning anti-personnel landmines nowadays she's taking that same fight to stop the killer robots can you tell me about the campaign to stop killer robot sure I was doing a piece on drones the CIA mercenaries in the US military and in the research I came upon the fact that they were being called for example the Model T of future robotic weaponry and I was in all honesty freaking out you know saying I can't believe this what you know where's the morality where are the ethics why do people think it is okay to create machines that on their own can target and kill it then I started pushing that we needed to bring together people we've worked with on other campaigns and launched a campaign to stop killer robots so we launched the campaign in London with a peaceful robot his name is David Beckham I wanna stress the campaign does not oppose robotics it does not oppose artificial intelligence it opposes putting all that together in machinery that can kill you by itself she's talking about autonomous robots which can make decisions on their own without humans in the loop those robots don't exist yet but in her research Jodie has encountered bipedal robots like the ones we saw at Virginia Tech and she's worried our VA's grand plan is much more sinister than semi autonomous search and rescue you know when I saw Atlas the only thing I could think of was when are they gonna put you know machine guns or whatever they will ultimately decide to put on it the line we kept getting is that these are service oriented robots they're here to help humans and then they will be helping humans kill when they tell you that they will not be weaponizing them I want to know what they're smoking there is nothing that the US develops in the military sphere that it does not want to weaponize but what about something like a bomb defusing robot the US military has been deploying explosive ordnance disposal robots by the thousands since the beginning of the Iraq war they're the little brothers to Atlas and Escher and they've saved the lives of countless soldiers and civilians we get a crash course in bomb box at Fort ap Hill a US Army training base in Southwest Virginia so in the expose for disposal field were early adopters and saw the value in robotic platforms early in the 1980s we adopted our first set of robots so this is a class of the advanced NCO course these are all staff sergeants you're for training and part of their training is to use robots so this is a variety of tests you know how do you get a robot up and down staff how'd you get it in and around corners and then how do you use the gripper to pick up change pull off or somehow manipulate the item that you're trying to use but not using Xbox controllers right absolutely yes I don't claim credit for it but that was one of those conversations that we had one time with field reps and we said hey you know we already have a whole class of young men and women that are certified to use this so would it be great if we could have a controller that did that and so that is the controller that comes with that robot because the soldiers are already well versed and using so apparently there's a robot over here that's opening a car door the folks over here are operating it so it's right here that you're saying this is like the technology I can't tell if it's purposely coming happy so you can see there's a mock explosive in here and I think it's just about to pull it out success you know the soldiers be used of these robots every day a lot of the soldiers become very familiar with the robots and they make up names for them based on their particular attributes or sometimes those things will yeah we'll come up with nicknames the soldiers do not think the robots are alive but they also know that you know they're part of it they're sort of part of the team as he brings you the cell phone you can't understate the humanitarian impact of explosive ordnance robots but one thing we weren't shown at the army base is what else the military has done to these platforms they've weaponized them [Music] why would military weaponize a bomb disposal robot because they can that's an example of you know when they say to you we won't weaponize the Atlas well if they're weaponizing a robot that did do good service in disposing of bombs so US military will not die wasn't that enough this is confirmed Jodi's fear that all military machines are inevitably outfitted to kill you know the drones just sort of spun themselves out you know they started out being surveillance equipment and then somebody you know figured out that if you put a couple of hellfire missiles on them you could quack people drones are arguably the most recognizable and controversial of today's high-tech military gear to understand what happens when we weaponize semi autonomous machines like drones we meet the Raymond family the alleged victims of a drone strike in Pakistan Mira Scully that leave a neutral space you need no Markey died she epidural a person amis and I oppose Allah I will kiss you Munich Rihanna come with a possible laser to continue this is what that reported strike looked like from the eyes of a drone nagi-chan authority Chad McCracken as a pastor has moved some demos of that immunity lundi roland museu benaki when you move away the numerator program is diversity award over at Almir for like a documentary photographer come on I mean are they related but AG literacy knowledge period or Japan came in herbology via Tom de Merville keys Baraka Dolce party near amused by 20 Kincaid Nevada Livi is a Saturday for X hours well I wanna get a creepin nobody imprisonment on University according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism drones have killed between twenty four hundred and thirty nine hundred people in Pakistan since 2004 but the bureau's tally at least four hundred of those victims were innocent civilians between 150 and 200 were children arguing and then I'd be like this turkey day she doesn't better the new kijang banca the chapel there's ma Arabia to turbocharge the Hulk attack a pilot at the hospice where Camry kids are what osawa Rafiq's belief that tension throughout the Middle East over the US drone program is being used by militants as a recruiting tool is shared by some of those on the other side of the computer screen I mean we're supposed to be this so this is shining beacon on the hill and all that in the United States you know with this technology I very sincerely believe that it's creating more enemies and it's solving any problems the precedents that we're setting as disastrous Adam works for a u.s. military contractor he monitored multiple live video feeds from drones flying over Iraq and Afghanistan I'm not necessarily proud of you know my participation in the drone program eight hours a day seven days a week I was sitting in front of monitors and monitor up to sixteen drone feeds at once and I would report significant activity but all we could see I know from where our vantage point and that's all that the approving Authority could see was heat signatures that were suspicious or we're running around or whatever and then it would take them out sometimes hitting a target sometimes not sometimes you know taking out a quarter of a city block in Afghanistan you can have a suspected Taliban meeting spot drone will observe it see this suspected meeting is taking place it may not be a meeting you paid to speak a freaking potluck Hellfire is launched takes takes out you know 20 30 people in that in that village you could take out a whole generation you know in that small village and then think about those adults are those people that are left remaining and what would their opinion of the United States be reciprocity in war is something that we never think about if you attacked somebody in theory they should have the means of responding a drone makes that impossible nobody can surrender why do you think all of the terrorist organizations are having no trouble recruiting understandably and we're not even supposed to say that right we're not supposed to understand why people in Pakistan might hate US drones and by extension the country that is using them but others like Christine fair a military affairs expert at Georgetown think we have no option but to use drones in modern warfare I know people who live in South and North Waziristan who are incredibly Pro drone in fact they are so Pro drone that they call drones ababeel so in the Quran there is a surah called surah alphie which means the elephant passage and in this passage the Quran describes an invader who brought an army of elephants to attack the Kaaba in Mecca and the ababeel of these little swallows that dropped black stones upon the elephants to repel them because they say drones are the only things that are taking out the terrorists their options are to do nothing or when the Pakistani military feels like it to come in and conduct gross airstrikes which have displaced millions of people so there's there's a cost to not doing drone strikes as well to me the opposition to the drones it's a very dangerous form of Luddite ISM for which I have very little tolerance just focusing on the military aspects of removing a target this is the most humane way because if you need to fire a missile from an f-16 from a helicopter gunship from an ac-130 you take out cities you take out villages you take out wedding parties now every once awhile kid will run into a frame there's nothing you can do about that but the question then has to be asked since we can do this with a drone why is it humane to use any other weapon system they desire to ignore blowback you know from the drones is ridiculous and when we move beyond that to fully autonomous killers that can go out on their own and fly around for however long they can fly around and target things how how would you feel the x-47b which is a high-tech plane can take off and land on its own was unveiled and test flown after discussions in Geneva though they were talking about it that at this point it would not be used in a fully autonomous fashion because of the pressure and the directive from the military saying that they cannot develop fully autonomous weapons if the inevitable happens then of course that thing will be used fully autonomously it is a goal to have these robotic platforms kill things without having a human pilot now do I feel uncomfortable about that yes I do actually the x-47b is a prototype that can take off and land on its own so while it won't ever fly missions independently it is representative of a new era of autonomy and military robotics when we talk about that that precedent that the drone seems to have set you know how is that gonna shape the future of Atlas or or uh sure are they gonna be going the way of the drones so to speak I believe so some people will argue no but I think they're obvious gaining back at Virginia Tech it's finally time to see those controversial machines doing their thing this six-foot-tall 330-pound bipedal humanoid robot is about ready to take a walk [Music] [Applause] and there you have it so my creature with the problem with the initial walk was so you got your robot failed Vidya it's really cool when it works and it's frustrating when you have issues but it worked in the practice this morning [Music] we're thinking that they we may be having an issue with one of the sensors on the feet and it's due to go back to Boston Dynamics for an upgrade in the next month so we haven't worried too much about it [Music] [Applause] [Music] Atlas eventually gets moving albeit very very slowly almost agonizingly so it's gonna be picking up that's the intense is you know we want to walk walk over and then pick up the drill if I were in a burning building and this thing was dispatched to save me I probably wouldn't make it [Music] it can't be argued that Atlas failed the drill test a task it will have to perform in the DARPA challenge only today it was pretty slow okay but what about uh sure I have to say first contact with Usher aka Thor is pretty thrilling so what's the coolest trick this robot can do some of the neat things that we can make it do our stand up on one foot push it around and what's neat about this is Thor right now is basically moving around as if his eyes are shut but Thor's reaction time is so quick that he's able to stay standing and he's also using this whole body controller and the whole body controller keeps to count everything the arms the legs all the ligaments where all of his moments of an [Music] Asher manages some impressive stuff we try to make the robot be able to do things that humans can do like stepping up on blocks for stepping on rubble having that rubble shift underneath his feet and if the rope if people are able to do it we should be able to make our robot be able to as well on it so that's what we've been doing as we test instance it grace the pebble bed so easily we decide to put something a bit more real-world in its path [Music] robots are hard robots are very hard but some of the hardest things to do are tests to show where it fails and then fix those failures so that it won't fail again because we have a lot of successes with it but then there are also a lot of hidden bugs you know in the system and we want to make sure that those don't arise when it really needs to matter the most we're designing this to help in situations like the Fukushima disaster we'd be totally happy if the robot was able to understand hey there's this disaster and I am a tool that can help these humans not get hurt I sure is perhaps slightly more graceful than Atlas but it's still not like this thing is gonna run you down and kill you in the time since we wrapped shooting at Virginia Tech I sure underwent considerable hardware and software upgrades including better artificial intelligence the same goes for Atlas to get some perspective on the state of robot intelligence we met up with max tegmark a physics professor at MIT people whose imagination is so limited you know they think that if you make something smarter than us it's just gonna be a tiny tiny bit smarter than us as if like we are only a tiny tiny bit smaller than snails tegmark recently co-authored a paper with renowned cosmologist Stephen Hawking their op-ed didn't say AI is inherently bad but Hawking and tegmark warned of a possible doomsday scenario if we don't start putting regulations on AI right now to me they're really important development to watch is not the ability to build machines that looked like humans with two legs but rather the ability to put really smart brains in them these rope machine so far I have a very narrow and limited intelligence and by simply replacing the software by the state-of-the-art from five or ten years from now they will be able to do dramatically better things if we develop extremely advanced AI and that has military use it's pretty likely that the world's militaries are gonna start using it regardless of what the geeky professor or whatever developed it thinks about that Tech mark thinks there is a bigger precedent here the bomb some of the scientists should design the atomic bomb in fact most of them did not want it to be dropped on civilians in Japan there was a James Franck report that said hey let's just detonated in an act hall in front of some Japanese admirals and generals and get them to surrender but the scientists weren't the ones who got to make that decision [Music] so could robotics be heading down the same path if we're not careful enough there are basically two things which go in parallel as society of all is right there is the the power of our technology and then there's the wisdom of us humans for how to manage the technology if the the knowledge grows faster than the wisdom it's kind of like going into kindergarten and giving them a bunch of hand grenades to play with we have no clue what would happen if we were to ever succeed in making machines that are much smarter than us if people tell me oh I know exactly what's gonna happen and it's gonna be great I would take that with a grain of salt for Jody there's nothing about the March of Robotics that should be taken with a grain of salt the United States has never met anything in its military arsenal that it did not want to weaponize so to say that you have this six foot six inch robot who they are working feverishly to make more mobile to not be still tethered to the core and etcetera etcetera you're gonna tell me that they're not going to put machine guns on that guy and send him into urban warfare I want to know how they can convince themselves that that might be true and when I'm in a really bad mood I want to know why they'll look you in the face [Music]

Channel: VICE

Views: 478,937

Rating: 4.4686966 out of 5

Keywords: documentary, documentaries, docs, journalism, vice guide, vice.com, vice, vice magazine, vice mag, vice videos, artificial intelligence, autonomous weapons, killer robots, self driving car, self driving tesla, vice news, killer robot, killer robots documentary, killer robots boston dynamics, andrew yang, andrew yang artificial intelligence, terminator dark fate trailer, terminator dark fate, wall e full movie, wall e trailer, short circuit, johnny five, sarah connor, skynet

Id: 0M4JMhXNNOg

Length: 28min 40sec (1720 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/diabeetus76]

Is it me or are scientists and rich people making all of the crazy science fiction stuff they grew up with a reality? A lot of these concepts have been around for maybe a hundred years or more. Shits going to get weird for sure. I’m 43. I can’t imagine what fuckery will be around when I’m 73🤷‍♂️🤷‍♂️

[u/antonboomboomjenkins]

This is an old, outdated video.

[u/MattyMoses]

They don't seem too worried when humans kill other innocent humans. Why start worrying about robots doing it?

[u/slybird]

I can't think of any tool we have made is not put to both helpful and harmful uses.

[u/ThexGreatxBeyondx]

Hey, laser lips! Your mama was a snowblower!

[u/BertramScudder]

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

[u/Its_Ba]

Climate change!...?

[u/ruchec82]

Honestly, not a piece of good journalism. And is outdated.

[u/eddyparkinson]

The Killer Robot is Inevitable, yes. Takeover, there is nothing on the horizon at the moment.