{"id":852,"date":"2013-09-11T02:04:19","date_gmt":"2013-09-11T00:04:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/?p=852"},"modified":"2015-04-21T14:06:23","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T12:06:23","slug":"rise-of-the-machines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/rise-of-the-machines\/","title":{"rendered":"Rise of the machines"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;ve got to love Michio Kaku. The smiling American <span id=\"tooltip55231ee299ef5\">physicist<\/span> knows the answer to everything, and because he does, he appears in every single science documentary these days \u2014 at least those produced by the Discovery Channel.<\/p>\n<p>Kaku&#8217;s 2009\u201310 series <i>Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible<\/i>, currently showing on German TV, <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29a2dd\">underscores<\/span> the extent to which science fiction inspires today&#8217;s engineers. Obviously, we&#8217;re still a long way away from some of the advanced ideas like teleportation and time travel, but we&#8217;re much closer to things like saving Earth from an asteroid collision and being able to make objects <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29a6c4\">invisible<\/span>. Kaku is optimistic that, given enough time, humanity will be able to do almost anything that doesn&#8217;t directly <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29aaab\">violate<\/span> the laws of physics.<\/p>\n<p>The descriptions of two episodes in particular may, however, give one pause: &#8220;Dr. Kaku plans to create a unified <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29ae93\">cyborg<\/span> army to take on the forces of evil, using his training experience in the US Army&#8221; is one. Then, in the next episode: &#8220;Michio Kaku comes up with a plan to stop the robots from taking over Earth.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/J7SCQ9XH8B4\" width=\"440\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>The Terminator movies originally had the robot <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29b27c\">uprising<\/span> happening on August 29, 1997, so we&#8217;re a little behind schedule. Robots have turned out to be a lot <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29b663\">clumsier<\/span> and less intelligent than we imagined. In fact, the writers of <i>Terminator 3<\/i> in 2003 had to <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29ba4c\">resort to<\/span> <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29be33\">circular logic<\/span> to make their story work: a Terminator from the future gives our military hardware the necessary instructions.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, the US military is already a high-tech fighting force. It strikes at night, when it can see better than its <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29c21c\">adversaries<\/span>. Its soldiers carry laptops to collect and receive information, even during battle. Not least, it uses <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29c603\">cruise missiles<\/span> and drones wherever possible in order not to endanger the lives of its own soldiers.<\/p>\n<p>The CIA and military under Barack Obama have relied to an <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29c9ec\">unprecedented<\/span> extent on the use of <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29cdd3\">unmanned aerial vehicles<\/span> to <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29d1bd\">knock out<\/span> &#8220;targets&#8221; in the hinterlands of Pakistan and Yemen. For five years now, Obama&#8217;s critics in Congress have been very <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29d5a3\">vocal<\/span> in criticizing military strikes <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29d98b\">at the push of a button<\/span>, asking who decides who lives and who dies on the basis of a <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29dd72\">blurry<\/span> <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29e15c\">aerial photograph<\/span>.<\/p>\n<p>Just what all this <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29e543\">implies<\/span> was <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29e92b\">revealed<\/span> in John Kerry&#8217;s <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29ed13\">testimony<\/span> before Congress <a title=\"Syria: the unanswered questions (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/syria-the-unanswered-questions\" target=\"_blank\">last week<\/a>. Asked why he believed the president could order an attack on Syria on his own, Kerry said, &#8220;We don&#8217;t believe we are going to war, in the classic sense of taking American troops and America to war.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/ei8VvHStSUg\" width=\"440\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Syria might see that a bit differently. However, Kerry and General Martin Dempsey, head of the <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29f0fc\">Joint Chiefs of Staff<\/span>, were confident that the American ships that would <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29f4e3\">launch<\/span> the missiles would be too far away for Syria to hit them back.<\/p>\n<p>Even Kerry acknowledged in an <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29f8cb\">offhand<\/span> remark that at some point, the situation in Syria would have to be solved on the ground. Either the Syrian &#8220;oppositionists&#8221; (Kerry&#8217;s word) would have to gain the upper hand, or the <span id=\"tooltip55231ee29fcb3\">Basher<\/span> (King Bashar al-Assad) would have to agree to negotiations.<\/p>\n<p>Soon there will be another way. The next war fought by the United States on the ground may be the first robot war.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube-nocookie.com\/embed\/cNZPRsrwumQ\" width=\"420\" height=\"236\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>While robots are not yet autonomous and won&#8217;t be firing the shots, they will be carrying heavy loads, jumping onto roofs, flying through windows, gathering information and potentially helping wounded soldiers or even civilians. A soldier&#8217;s best friend won&#8217;t be his <span id=\"tooltip55231ee2a009c\">buddy<\/span>; it&#8217;ll be his robot.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s the first step, anyway. In a few years&#8217; time, when the robots are more intelligent, outfitted with <span id=\"tooltip55231ee2a04a8\">facial-recognition<\/span> technology and <a title=\"The Snowden paradox (Mike Pilewski)\" href=\"\/blog\/the-snowden-paradox\" target=\"_blank\">information from the NSA<\/a>, they might start suggesting targets on their own.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ll see if Michio Kaku has a solution for that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>You&#8217;ve got to love Michio Kaku. The smiling American physicist knows the answer to everything, and because he does, he appears in every single science documentary these days \u2014 at least those produced by the Discovery Channel. Kaku&#8217;s 2009\u201310 series Sci-Fi Science: Physics of the Impossible, currently showing on German TV, underscores the extent to which science fiction inspires today&#8217;s <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/rise-of-the-machines\/\">&#8230; >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,61],"tags":[58,68,175,79,80,26,60,82,86,62,250],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1336,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852\/revisions\/1336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fascinating-america.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}