Slaughterbots Can't Be Stopped!

[OmegaLogos]

Explanation: I am horribly reminded of this news article from a few years back ...

Robot Cannon Kills 9, Wounds 14 [wired.com]

We're not used to thinking of them this way. But many advanced military weapons are essentially robotic – picking targets out automatically, slewing into position, and waiting only for a human to pull the trigger. Most of the time. Once in a while, though, these machines start firing mysteriously on their own. The South African National Defence Force "is probing whether a software glitch led to an antiaircraft cannon malfunction that killed nine soldiers and seriously injured 14 others during a shooting exercise on Friday."

SA National Defence Force spokesman brigadier general Kwena Mangope says the cause of the malfunction is not yet known...

Media reports say the shooting exercise, using live ammunition, took place at the SA Army's Combat Training Centre, at Lohatlha, in the Northern Cape, as part of an annual force preparation endeavour.

Mangope told The Star *that it “is assumed that there was a mechanical problem, which led to the accident. The gun, which was fully loaded, did not fire as it normally should have," he said. "It appears as though the gun, which is computerised, jammed before there was some sort of explosion, and then it opened fire uncontrollably, killing and injuring the soldiers." [More details here – ed.] *

Other reports have suggested a computer error might have been to blame. Defence pundit Helmoed-Römer Heitman told the Weekend Argus that if “the cause lay in computer error, the reason for the tragedy might never be found."

The anti-aircraft weapon, an Oerlikon GDF-005, is designed to use passive and active radar, as well as laser target designators range finders, to lock on to "high-speed, low-flying aircraft, helicopters, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) and cruise missiles." In "automatic mode,"
the weapon feeds targeting data from the fire control unit straight to the pair of
35mm guns, and reloads on its own when its emptied its magazine.

Electronics engineer and defence company CEO
Richard Young says he can't believe the incident was purely a mechanical fault. He says his company, C2I2,^ ^in the mid 1990s, was involved in two air defence artillery upgrade programmes, dubbed Projects Catchy and Dart.____ ____

During the shooting trials at Armscor's Alkantpan shooting range, “I
personally saw a gun go out of control several times,” Young says.
“They made a temporary rig consisting of two steel poles on each side of the weapon, with a rope in between to keep the weapon from swinging.
The weapon eventually knocked the pol[e]s down.”

According* to The Star, *"a female artillery officer risked her life... in a desperate bid " to save members of her battery from the gun."

But the brave, as yet unnamed officer was unable to stop the wildly swinging computerised Swiss/German Oerlikon 35mm MK5 anti-aircraft twin-barrelled gun. It sprayed hundreds of high-explosive 0,5kg 35mm cannon shells around the five-gun firing position.

By the time the gun had emptied its twin 250-round auto-loader magazines, nine soldiers were dead and 11 injured.*

And a non military related slaughterbot slaying a humans tragic event ....


Robot 'goes rogue and kills woman on Michigan car parts production line'

A robot at a car parts manufacturer killed a maintenance technician when it went rogue and crushed her skull, her widower has claimed in a lawsuit.

Wanda Holbrook, who had serviced machinery at the Ventra Ionia Mains plant in Michigan for 12 years, was “trapped by robotic machinery and pronounced dead at the scene” in July 2015.

The 57-year-old’s husband, William Holbrook, filed a wrongful death complaint in Michigan federal court, naming five US robotics companies: Prodomax, Flex-N-Gate, FANUC, Nachi, and Lincoln Electric.

Read more

Robots could replace 250,000 public sector workers

Ms Holbrook was working in the plant’s “100 section” when a robot unexpectedly began to move.

Cells in the section are separated by safety doors and the robot should not have been able to reach her, but somehow it did, the lawsuit claims.

It loaded a trailer attachment assembly part onto her head, crushing her skull.

“Wanda was working in either section 140 or 150 within the ‘100’ cell, when a robot from section 130 took Wanda by surprise, entering the section she was working in,” the complaint says.

“Upon entering the section, the robot hit and crushed Wanda’s head between a hitch assembly it was attempting to place in the fixture of section 140, and a hitch assembly that was already in the fixture.”

Co-workers who eventually realised something was wrong found Ms Holbrook dead from severe head trauma.

Her death "devastated her husband, three children, grandchildren and dozens of co-workers who filled the back four pews at her funeral," the Detroit Free Press reported.
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“The robot from section 130 should have never entered section 140, and should have never attempted to load a hitch assembly within a fixture that was already loaded with a hitch assembly,” the lawsuit says.

“A failure of one or more of defendants’ safety systems or devices had taken place, causing Wanda’s death.”

Lincoln Electric spokeswoman Amanda Butler declined to comment on the lawsuit.

“While we can’t comment specifically before thoroughly reviewing the suit, we can say that Lincoln Electric is committed to the design and production of safe solutions,” she told The Courthouse News Service.

Deaths caused by robots are unusual. The first is thought to have happened in 1979, when a worker died after being hit by the arm of a production-line robot at a Ford factory in Flat Rock in Michigan.

Even the famed and reknowned Elon Musk isn't above reproach as one of his driverless Tesla cars made an error that resulted in the immediate death of the actual driver of the car whilst he was busy on his mobile fone. [ I wont link that one as i feel that the previous two articles will make my point very clearly, but you can find it using any decent search engine for the interwebs.]

Personal Disclosure: The terminator movie for realz is no laughing matter at all [not that anybody laughed..I am just saying it as matter of factness ok] and AI will soon surpass our own human skill levels just as was recently demonstrated in a game of Go with an AI that quickly beat the worlds best Go players. We have obsoleted ourselves to be replaced by something that is harder stronger faster better and isn't limited by pain overwhelming them in any circumstances.

However to give some contrast to the slaughterbots I am compelled to compare it with the death by motor vehicles driven by humans.

If killing 'millions' each years in car accidents [random statistic I made up ... but I also bet that I am in the general ballpark with that underhanded figure pitching] was to be deemed unacceptable and we banned all cars and trucks etc then what a different world we would live in and I can say the same for alcohol and smoking as well.

Millions are killed and yet where is the outrage???