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I need to get me one o’ them! Can ya’ll loan me $20,000? Hey, and then we could get it outfitted with armor, rockets, and machine guns, etc. I’ll lead the invasion into Iran! Just call me Iron Man, motherfuckers.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:25 pmbad ass stuff that will help a lot of people and no doubt improve its performance, then we can start creating iron men a la terminator variety.
August 26th, 2008 at 12:59 pmHave you seen the recent science news stories of chimpanzees controlling robotic arms via neural implants? In that vein, I’ll have to dig out my old unclassified 2003 DARPA “Strategic Plan” on what essentially is “RoboTroop” and forward it on.
I am not kidding you on this: DARPA envisioned selecting highly-trained soldiers into which “high-density neural implants” (their term, complete with photos) would be surgically implanted in their brains, with some sort of connector coming out the back of their heads. Right out of “The Matrix.”
Anyway, the idea is that the soldiers would be escorted to a darkened room where they would lie comfortably on an air-cushioned barco-lounger, and a computer interface would be plugged into them that connected them via radio telemetry to a set of robots in some troop deployment vehicle near the battlefield. In what could be described as “total sensory replacement,” the soldiers’ fleshly bodies would be “replaced” via the computer interface with robotic bodies that they could move and receive sensory data from. In essence, the soldiers temporarily become sentient robots, where they then exit the deployment vehicle to engage the enemy with expendable robotic bodies. If the enemey manages to destroy a robot, the computer switches the soldier to the next robot in the DV and off he goes to continue the fight.
A rather novel solution of the philosophical question, “What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object?” In this case, how do you combat suicidal terrorists that want to die in Jihad, except by sending in truly expendable robotic soldiers that cannot be killed.
DARPA had other things in that report that were even freakier, and which they estimated they were perhaps 15 to 20 years away from. The Air Force’s description, however, of related neural research was downright scarey in their (IMO) cavalier approach to the ethical implications.
August 26th, 2008 at 1:18 pmThis is the premise of a sci-fi book by Joe Haldeman called “Forever Peace”.
I would say what you are talking about will eventually come to pass…fighting wars by proxy.
August 26th, 2008 at 1:41 pmFrom this working prototype it will evolve into something that’s stronger, faster, quicker, lighter and cheaper!
August 26th, 2008 at 2:54 pmHang in there … and keep an eye on stuff like this. Find out if they want/need test subjects to try these things out and live with them …
I would!

August 26th, 2008 at 5:06 pmMost technologies started out as sci-fi. I seem to recall Arthur C. Clarke mentioning satellites in one of his novels, and later regretting that he hadn’t thought to patent the concept.
As for DARPA’s description, given the presumption that most black projects are probably 15 to 30 years ahead of the civilian world, and the fact that the civilian world is already showing success with monkey implants PLUS a year or two ago some civilian lab announced a breakthrough in “molecular memory” that was mentioned in the DARPA report, I’m wondering just how close “RoboTroop” really is to being “science” instead of “fiction.”
I don’t know if I would so quickly volunteer for something like this. The same DARPA report that mentioned “RoboTroop” also spoke of bona fide “sentient robots” as coming after RoboTroop. The easiest way to achieve that level of programming would be to copy your engrams and then modify them for the robot. There’s something creepy about that which is too late to explore in this thread as it’s already gone stale.
August 27th, 2008 at 9:09 amI just added you to my favorites.
September 9th, 2008 at 11:18 pm