Category Archives: Technology and Society

Terminators, Coming Up

Alan Boyle has an interesting post on the ethics of killer robots.

“Asimov contributed greatly in the sense that he put up a straw man to get the debate going on robotics,” Arkin said. “But it’s not a basis for morality. He created [the Three Laws] deliberately with gaps so you could have some interesting stories.”

Even without the Three Laws, there’s plenty in today’s debate over battlefield robotics to keep novelists and philosophers busy: Is it immoral to wage robotic war on humans? How many civilian casualties are acceptable when a robot is doing the fighting? If a killer robot goes haywire, who (or what) goes before the war-crimes tribunal?

Strange Internet Problems

As some of you have heard (it seems to be the main news now on cable), Florida had a massive power outage today. It didn’t affect me, except indirectly.

About quarter after one, I heard a little click from my UPS, which usually indicates a power drop, but we didn’t lose power, and even a computer that wasn’t on a UPS didn’t seem to have a problem. But I noticed shortly afterward that I had no internet connection. The DSL modem lights were all working fine, but I couldn’t connect, even after repeated resets. I ended up being on the phone with AT&T for over an hour, and they finally got things working again. They told me that somehow (somehow?) my authentication had gotten screwed up, and that they had rejiggered (or some other technical term) the lines to get it working again. They didn’t believe that it had anything to do with the power outage–that it was just coincidence. I’m skeptical.

Anyway, as you can see, I’m back on line.