I thought I'd begin with a scene of war. There was little to warn of the danger ahead. The Iraqi insurgent had placed the IED, an Improvised Explosive Device, along the side of the road with great care. By 2006, there were more than 2,500 of these attacks every single month, and they were the leading cause of casualties among American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. The team that was hunting for this IED is called an EOD team— Explosives Ordinance Disposal—and they're the pointy end of the spear in the American effort to suppress these roadside bombs. Each EOD team goes out on about 600 of these bomb calls every year, defusing about two bombs a day. Perhaps the best sign of how valuable they are to the war effort, is that the Iraqi insurgents put a $50,000 bounty on the head of a single EOD soldier.
M-am gândit să încep cu o scenă de război. Nimic nu anunța pericolul iminent. Insurgentul irakian plasase bomba artizanală la marginea șoselei, cu mare grijă. Până în 2006 aveau loc mai mult de 2.500 de astfel de atacuri, lunar, ele fiind cauza principală a victimelor din rândul soldaților americani și a civililor irakieni. Echipa care căuta această bombă era o echipă IDE - (Înlăturarea Dispozitivelor Explozive) - ei sunt cei aflați în avangarda efortului american de a înlătura acest tip de bombă. Fiecare echipă IDE răspunde la circa 600 de apeluri cu bombă pe an, dezamorsând două bombe pe zi. Valoarea acestor echipe în război e demonstrată de faptul că insurgenții irakieni oferă o recompensă de $50.000 pe capul unui soldat din echipa IDE.
Unfortunately, this particular call would not end well. By the time the soldier advanced close enough to see the telltale wires of the bomb, it exploded in a wave of flame. Now, depending how close you are and how much explosive has been packed into that bomb, it can cause death or injury. You have to be as far as 50 yards away to escape that. The blast is so strong it can even break your limbs, even if you're not hit. That soldier had been on top of the bomb.
Din păcate, această misiune nu s-a încheiat cu bine. Până ce soldatul să se apropie destul încât să vadă firele bombei, aceasta a explodat într-un val de flăcări. Depinzând de distanță și de cantitatea de explozibil conţinută de bombă aceasta poate cauza moarte sau leziuni. Trebuie să fii la cel puțin 45 de metri depărtare pentru a scăpa. Forța exploziei e atât de mare încât îți poate rupe membrele chiar în absența impactului. Acel soldat era deasupra bombei.
And so when the rest of the team advanced they found little left. And that night the unit's commander did a sad duty, and he wrote a condolence letter back to the United States, and he talked about how hard the loss had been on his unit, about the fact that they had lost their bravest soldier, a soldier who had saved their lives many a time. And he apologized for not being able to bring them home. But then he talked up the silver lining that he took away from the loss. "At least," as he wrote, "when a robot dies, you don't have to write a letter to its mother."
Când restul echipei a avansat nu au găsit prea multe rămășițe. În acea noapte, comandantul a avut sarcina dificilă de a scrie o scrisoare de condoleanțe în Statele Unite și a vorbit despre cât de dureroasă a fost pierderea pentru unitatea lui, că au pierdut cel mai curajos soldat al lor, un soldat care le salvase viețile de nenumărate ori. Apoi comandatul a cerut iertare pentru că nu putea să-l aducă acasă. Dar apoi a vorbit despre lecția primită în urma pierderii. „Cel puțin, când un robot moare, nu trebuie să scrii o scrisoare mamei sale”.
That scene sounds like science fiction, but is battlefield reality already. The soldier in that case was a 42-pound robot called a PackBot. The chief's letter went, not to some farmhouse in Iowa like you see in the old war movies, but went to the iRobot Company, which is named after the Asimov novel and the not-so-great Will Smith movie, and... um... (Laughter)... if you remember that in that fictional world, robots started out carrying out mundane chores, and then they started taking on life-and-death decisions. That's a reality we face today.
Scena pare desprinsă dintr-un SF, dar e realitatea câmpului de luptă. În acel caz, soldatul era un robot de 19 kg numit PackBot. Scrisoarea nu era destinată vreunei ferme din Iowa cum vedem în filmele vechi de război, ci companiei iRobot, numită după romanul lui Asimov şi după mai puţin reuşitul film cu Will Smith, şi... ăăă... (Râsete)... Dacă vă amintiţi, în literatură, roboţii au început prin a îndeplini sarcini obișnuite și abia apoi au luat decizii de viață și de moarte. Asta e realitatea de azi.
What we're going to do is actually just flash a series of photos behind me that show you the reality of robots used in war right now or already at the prototype stage. It's just to give you a taste. Another way of putting it is you're not going to see anything that's powered by Vulcan technology, or teenage wizard hormones or anything like that. This is all real. So why don't we go ahead and start those pictures.
Vom arăta o serie de fotografii în spatele meu despre roboții folosiți în războaie acum sau care sunt în stadiul de prototip - ca să vă faceți o idee. Nu veți vedea nimic operat de tehnologia Vulcan sau hormoni adolescentini sau orice altceva. E real. Să-i dăm drumul și să vedem fotografiile.
Something big is going on in war today, and maybe even the history of humanity itself. The U.S. military went into Iraq with a handful of drones in the air. We now have 5,300. We went in with zero unmanned ground systems. We now have 12,000. And the tech term "killer application" takes on new meaning in this space.
Ceva important are loc în război azi și posibil în istoria umanității. Trupele SUA au mers în Irak cu câteva drone. Acum avem 5.300. Nu aveam niciun sistem operat automat. Acum avem 12.000. Termenul de „aplicație mortală” are alt sens în acest context.
And we need to remember that we're talking about the Model T Fords, the Wright Flyers, compared to what's coming soon. That's where we're at right now. One of the people that I recently met with was an Air Force three-star general, and he said basically, where we're headed very soon is tens of thousands of robots operating in our conflicts, and these numbers matter, because we're not just talking about tens of thousands of today's robots, but tens of thousands of these prototypes and tomorrow's robots, because of course, one of the things that's operating in technology is Moore's Law, that you can pack in more and more computing power into those robots, and so flash forward around 25 years, if Moore's Law holds true, those robots will be close to a billion times more powerful in their computing than today.
Să ținem minte că vorbim de modelul Ford T, o variantă depășită în comparație cu cele din viitor. Aici ne aflăm acum. Am făcut cunoștință recent cu un general al Forțelor Aeriene triplu decorat, care a spus că în curând mii de roboți vor lua parte la conflicte. Aceste cifre contează fiindcă nu vorbim doar de zeci de mii de roboți de azi, ci despre zeci de mii de prototipuri și roboți de mâine, fiindcă una dintre regulile valabile în tehnologie e legea lui Moore - poți introduce tot mai multă putere de procesare în roboți, astfel încât în 25 de ani, dacă legea lui Moore e valabilă, acești roboți vor avea de un miliard de ori mai multă putere de procesare decât azi.
And so what that means is the kind of things that we used to only talk about at science fiction conventions like Comic-Con have to be talked about in the halls of power and places like the Pentagon. A robots revolution is upon us.
Asta înseamnă că lucrurile dezbătute doar la convenții de SF, gen Comic-Con, vor fi discutate pe coridoarele unor locuri precum Pentagonul. Revoluția roboților e iminentă.
Now, I need to be clear here. I'm not talking about a revolution where you have to worry about the Governor of California showing up at your door, a la the Terminator. (Laughter)
Vreau să mă înțelegeți bine. Nu vorbesc despre o revoluție în care guvernatorul Californiei apare la ușa voastră, à la Terminator. (Râsete)
When historians look at this period, they're going to conclude that we're in a different type of revolution: a revolution in war, like the invention of the atomic bomb. But it may be even bigger than that, because our unmanned systems don't just
Când istoricii vor studia această perioadă vor concluziona ca experimentăm o altfel de revoluție: o revoluție a războiului, de magnitudinea inventării bombei atomice. Dar s-ar putea să fie și mai măreață, fiidncă sistemele operate automat nu
affect the "how" of war-fighting, they affect the "who" of fighting at its most fundamental level. That is, every previous revolution in war, be it the machine gun, be it the atomic bomb, was about a system that either shot faster, went further, had a bigger boom. That's certainly the case with robotics, but they also change the experience of the warrior and even the very identity of the warrior.
influențează desfășurarea războaielor ci și pe combatanți la un nivel profund. Fiecare revoluție militară din trecut, fie că e vorba de apariția mitralierei sau a bombei atomice aducea ceva care trăgea mai repede, mergea mai departe sau exploda mai tare. Așa e și în robotică, dar ea schimbă și experiența războinicului, și identitatea acestuia.
Another way of putting this is that mankind's 5,000-year-old monopoly on the fighting of war is breaking down in our very lifetime. I've spent the last several years going around meeting with all the players in this field, from the robot scientists to the science fiction authors who inspired them to the 19-year-old drone pilots who are fighting from Nevada, to the four-star generals who command them, to even the Iraqi insurgents who they are targeting and what they think about our systems, and what I found interesting is not just their stories, but how their experiences point to these ripple effects that are going outwards in our society, in our law and our ethics, etc. And so what I'd like to do with my remaining time is basically flesh out a couple of these.
Altfel spus, monopolul de 5000 de ani al omenirii asupra războiului dispare sub ochii noștri. În ultimii ani, i-am întâlnit pe toți actorii din domeniu: oamenii de știință din robotică, autorii de SF care i-au inspirat, până la piloții de 19 ani ai dronelor ce luptă din Nevada și generalii de 4 stele care-i comandă, precum și pe insurgenții irakieni care erau ţinta și care îmi spuneau ce cred despre sistemele noastre. Mi se pare interesant cum experiențele lor au creat acest efect de domino în societatea noastră, în legislație, etică etc. În timpul rămas, vreau să ilustrez o parte din aceste efecte.
So the first is that the future of war, even a robotics one, is not going to be purely an American one. The U.S. is currently ahead in military robotics right now, but we know that in technology there's no such thing as a permanent first move or advantage. In a quick show of hands, how many people in this room still use Wang Computers? (Laughter) It's the same thing in war. The British and the French invented the tank. The Germans figured out how to use it right, and so what we have to think about for the U.S. is that we are ahead right now, but you have 43 other countries out there working on military robotics, and they include all the interesting countries like Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran.
În primul rând, viitorul războiului, fie și unul robotic, nu va fi unul eminamente american. În prezent, SUA conduc în robotică militară, dar știm că în tehnologie nu există avantajul primei mutări. Să ridice mâna cei care mai folosesc calculatoarele Wang? (Râsete) Așa e și în război. Britanicii și francezii au inventat tancul. Germanii și-au dat seama cum să îl folosească eficient. SUA dețin deocamdată avantajul, dar există alte 43 de țări care dezvoltă robotică militară, inclusiv țări „interesante” precum Rusia, China, Pakistan, Iran.
And this raises a bigger worry for me. How do we move forward in this revolution given the state of our manufacturing and the state of our science and mathematics training in our schools? Or another way of thinking about this is, what does it mean to go to war increasingly with soldiers whose hardware is made in China and software is written in India?
Tocmai asta mă îngrijorează. Cum să avansăm în această revoluţie dat fiind nivelul producției și pregătirea științifică și matematică din școlile noastre? Altfel spus, ce înseamnă să mergi la război cu soldați al căror hardware e făcut în China, iar softul e scris în India?
But just as software has gone open-source, so has warfare. Unlike an aircraft carrier or an atomic bomb, you don't need a massive manufacturing system to build robotics. A lot of it is off the shelf. A lot of it's even do-it-yourself. One of those things you just saw flashed before you was a raven drone, the handheld tossed one. For about a thousand dollars, you can build one yourself, equivalent to what the soldiers use in Iraq.
Tot așa cum softurile sunt open-source, așa e și războiul. Spre deosebire de un portavion sau o bombă atomică, nu ai nevoie de sisteme de producție mari ca să construiești roboți. Materialele pot fi cumpărate și asamblate de oricine. Tocmai ați văzut pe ecran o dronă Raven, ce poate fi lansată cu mâna. Pentru o mie de dolari, poți să construiești una, similară celor folosite în Irak.
That raises another wrinkle when it comes to war and conflict. Good guys might play around and work on these as hobby kits, but so might bad guys. This cross between robotics and things like terrorism is going to be fascinating and even disturbing, and we've already seen it start.
Asta ridică altă problemă când vine vorba de război și conflict. Băieții buni se pot juca cu dronele, ca hobby, dar la fel pot face și băieții răi. Legătura din robotică și terorism va fi fascinantă, dar mai ales îngrijorătoare. Am văzut deja ce se întâmplă.
During the war between Israel, a state, and Hezbollah, a non-state actor, the non-state actor flew four different drones against Israel. There's already a jihadi website that you can go on and remotely detonate an IED in Iraq while sitting at your home computer.
În războiul dintre Israel, un stat și Hezbollah, un actor nestatal, al doilea a trimis 4 drone în Israel. Există un site fundamentalist, de unde poți detona o bombă artizanală în Irak, din fața propriului PC.
And so I think what we're going to see is two trends take place with this. First is, you're going to reinforce the power of individuals against governments, but then the second is that we are going to see an expansion in the realm of terrorism. The future of it may be a cross between al Qaeda 2.0 and the next generation of the Unabomber. And another way of thinking about this is the fact that, remember, you don't have to convince a robot that they're gonna receive 72 virgins after they die to convince them to blow themselves up.
Cred că vor apărea două tendințe. Prima: puterea indivizilor asupra guvernelor va crește. Dar vom asista la o exacerbare a terorismului. Terorismul viitorului poate fi o combinație dintre Al-Qaeda 2.0 și viitoarea generație Unabomber. Să reținem că nu trebuie să convingi un robot că va primi 72 de virgine după ce moare ca să se arunce în aer.
But the ripple effects of this are going to go out into our politics. One of the people that I met with was a former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Ronald Reagan, and he put it this way: "I like these systems because they save American lives, but I worry about more marketization of wars, more shock-and-awe talk, to defray discussion of the costs. People are more likely to support the use of force if they view it as costless."
Efectele se vor vedea și în politică. M-am întâlnit cu un fost secretar adjunct de la Apărare de pe vremea lui Reagan, care mi-a spus: "Îmi plac sistemele astea fiindcă salvează viețile soldaților, dar mă îngrijorează comercializarea războaielor, discursurile care produc frică pentru a evita discuțiile despre costuri. Oamenii tind să susțină folosirea forței dacă o percep ca fiind gratuită.”
Robots for me take certain trends that are already in play in our body politic, and maybe take them to their logical ending point. We don't have a draft. We don't have declarations of war anymore. We don't buy war bonds anymore. And now we have the fact that we're converting more and more of our American soldiers that we would send into harm's way into machines, and so we may take those already lowering bars to war and drop them to the ground.
Roboții ilustrează câteva tendințe deja vizibile printre politicieni, și poate vor pune capăt acestor tendințe. Nu mai recrutăm soldați. Nu mai există declarații de război. Nu mai cumpărăm obligațiuni de război. Și acum, din ce în ce mai mulți soldați americani care ar fi trimiși să înfrunte pericolul sunt înlocuiți de mașini. Am putea să luăm armele și să le punem jos.
But the future of war is also going to be a YouTube war. That is, our new technologies don't merely remove humans from risk. They also record everything that they see. So they don't just delink the public: they reshape its relationship with war. There's already several thousand video clips of combat footage from Iraq on YouTube right now, most of it gathered by drones.
Dar războiul viitorului va fi unul pe Youtube. Noile tehnologii nu doar că nu mai pun oamenii în pericol, ele înregistrează tot ce văd. Nu numai că îndepărtează publicul, ele redefinesc relația lui cu războiul. Există deja câteva mii de înregistrări ale luptelor din Irak disponibile pe YouTube, majoritatea strânse de drone.
Now, this could be a good thing. It could be building connections between the home front and the war front as never before. But remember, this is taking place in our strange, weird world, and so inevitably the ability to download these video clips to, you know, your iPod or your Zune gives you the ability to turn it into entertainment.
Ar putea fi un lucru bun. S-ar putea crea o legătură cu totul nouă între acasă și front. Dar totul are loc în lumea noastră bizară și posibilitatea de a descărca videoclipurile pe iPod sau pe Zune le transformă într-o formă de amuzament.
Soldiers have a name for these clips. They call it war porn. The typical one that I was sent was an email that had an attachment of video of a Predator strike taking out an enemy site. Missile hits, bodies burst into the air with the explosion. It was set to music. It was set to the pop song "I Just Want To Fly" by Sugar Ray.
Soldații numesc aceste imagini „pornografie de război”. Am primit un videoclip tipic ataşat unui email - un videoclip cu o dronă Predator atacând inamicul. Rachete explodează, bucăți din corp zboară în aer. Totul pe un fond sonor, era un cântec pop, „I Just Want To Fly” - „Vreau doar să zbor”, al lui Sugar Ray.
This ability to watch more but experience less creates a wrinkle in the public's relationship with war. I think about this with a sports parallel. It's like the difference between watching an NBA game, a professional basketball game on TV, where the athletes are tiny figures on the screen, and being at that basketball game in person and realizing what someone seven feet really does look like.
Posibilitatea de a vedea mai mult și a experimenta mai puțin denaturează percepția asupra războiului. Să facem o paralelă cu sportul. E ca și cum vezi un meci profesionist de baschet din NBA la televizor, unde atleții sunt nişte siluete mici pe ecran, dar dacă urmărești meciul din sală îți dai seama cum arată cineva de 2 metri.
But we have to remember, these are just the clips. These are just the ESPN SportsCenter version of the game. They lose the context. They lose the strategy. They lose the humanity. War just becomes slam dunks and smart bombs.
Trebuie să ne amintim că astea sunt doar niște videoclipuri. E versiunea ESPN SportsCentre a jocului. Contextul se pierde. Strategia dispare. Latura umană dispare. Războiul se rezumă la marcarea unui gol și bombe inteligente.
Now the irony of all this is that while the future of war may involve more and more machines, it's our human psychology that's driving all of this, it's our human failings that are leading to these wars.
Ironia e că în timp ce războiul poate implica din ce în ce mai multe mașini, psihologia umană e cea care îl declașează, eșecurile oamenilor duc la aceste războaie.
So one example of this that has big resonance in the policy realm is how this plays out on our very real war of ideas that we're fighting against radical groups. What is the message that we think we are sending with these machines versus what is being received in terms of the message.
Un exemplu care rezonează puternic în politică e modul în care ne conducem războiul ideologic împotriva grupărilor fundamentaliste. Ce mesaj transmitem când trimitem aceste mașini versus ce mesaj e primit?
So one of the people that I met was a senior Bush Administration official, who had this to say about our unmanning of war: "It plays to our strength. The thing that scares people is our technology." But when you go out and meet with people, for example in Lebanon, it's a very different story. One of the people I met with there was a news editor, and we're talking as a drone is flying above him, and this is what he had to say. "This is just another sign of the coldhearted cruel Israelis and Americans, who are cowards because they send out machines to fight us. They don't want to fight us like real men, but they're afraid to fight, so we just have to kill a few of their soldiers to defeat them."
M-am întâlnit cu un fost oficial al administrației Bush care mi-a spus asta despre automatizarea războiului: „E un punct forte pentru noi. Oamenii se sperie de tehnologia noastră.” Dar când întâlnești oamenii, în Liban de exemplu, e o altă poveste. Unul dintre oamenii cu care m-am întâlnit era redactor și discutam, în timp ce o dronă zbura deasupra. Mi-a zis:
The future of war also is featuring a new type of warrior, and it's actually redefining the experience of going to war. You can call this a cubicle warrior. This is what one Predator drone pilot described of his experience fighting in the Iraq War while never leaving Nevada. "You're going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants, and then you get in the car and you drive home and within 20 minutes, you're sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework."
Now, the psychological balancing of those experiences is incredibly tough, and in fact those drone pilots have higher rates of PTSD than many of the units physically in Iraq. But some have worries that this disconnection will lead to something else, that it might make the contemplation of war crimes a lot easier when you have this distance. "It's like a video game," is what one young pilot described to me of taking out enemy troops from afar. As anyone who's played Grand Theft Auto knows, we do things in the video world that we wouldn't do face to face.
So much of what you're hearing from me is that there's another side to technologic revolutions, and that it's shaping our present and maybe will shape our future of war. Moore's Law is operative, but so's Murphy's Law. The fog of war isn't being lifted. The enemy has a vote.
We're gaining incredible new capabilities, but we're also seeing and experiencing new human dilemmas. Now, sometimes these are just "oops" moments, which is what the head of a robotics company described it, you just have "oops" moments. Well, what are "oops" moments with robots in war? Well, sometimes they're funny. Sometimes, they're like that scene from the Eddie Murphy movie "Best Defense," playing out in reality, where they tested out a machine gun-armed robot, and during the demonstration it started spinning in a circle and pointed its machine gun at the reviewing stand of VIPs. Fortunately the weapon wasn't loaded and no one was hurt, but other times "oops" moments are tragic, such as last year in South Africa, where an anti-aircraft cannon had a "software glitch," and actually did turn on and fired, and nine soldiers were killed.
We have new wrinkles in the laws of war and accountability. What do we do with things like unmanned slaughter? What is unmanned slaughter? We've already had three instances of Predator drone strikes where we thought we got bin Laden, and it turned out not to be the case. And this is where we're at right now. This is not even talking about armed, autonomous systems with full authority to use force. And do not believe that that isn't coming. During my research I came across four different Pentagon projects on different aspects of that.
And so you have this question: what does this lead to issues like war crimes? Robots are emotionless, so they don't get upset if their buddy is killed. They don't commit crimes of rage and revenge. But robots are emotionless. They see an 80-year-old grandmother in a wheelchair the same way they see a T-80 tank: they're both just a series of zeroes and ones. And so we have this question to figure out: How do we catch up our 20th century laws of war, that are so old right now that they could qualify for Medicare, to these 21st century technologies?
And so, in conclusion, I've talked about what seems the future of war, but notice that I've only used real world examples and you've only seen real world pictures and videos. And so this sets a great challenge for all of us that we have to worry about well before you have to worry about your Roomba sucking the life away from you. Are we going to let the fact that what's unveiling itself right now in war sounds like science fiction and therefore keeps us in denial? Are we going to face the reality of 21st century war? Is our generation going to make the same mistake that a past generation did with atomic weaponry, and not deal with the issues that surround it until Pandora's box is already opened up?
Now, I could be wrong on this, and one Pentagon robot scientist told me that I was. He said, "There's no real social, ethical, moral issues when it comes to robots. That is," he added, "unless the machine kills the wrong people repeatedly. Then it's just a product recall issue."
And so the ending point for this is that actually, we can turn to Hollywood. A few years ago, Hollywood gathered all the top characters and created a list of the top 100 heroes and top 100 villains of all of Hollywood history, the characters that represented the best and worst of humanity. Only one character made it onto both lists: The Terminator, a robot killing machine. And so that points to the fact that our machines can be used for both good and evil, but for me it points to the fact that there's a duality of humans as well.
This week is a celebration of our creativity. Our creativity has taken our species to the stars. Our creativity has created works of arts and literature to express our love. And now, we're using our creativity in a certain direction, to build fantastic machines with incredible capabilities, maybe even one day an entirely new species. But one of the main reasons that we're doing that is because of our drive to destroy each other, and so the question we all should ask: is it our machines, or is it us that's wired for war?
Thank you. (Applause)