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Originally posted by Kwicko:
http://www.newschoolers.com/ns/content/readblog/member_id/13302/eid/31
390/

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Originally posted by Fremdfirma:

One of my prosthetic tool and equipment providers is Cybderdyne Systems

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Originally posted by Kwicko:
Funny? I think it's more than just a li'l bit scary, to be honest. Putting words like "aggressive" and "autonomous" in with my droids just really puts me off.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
As an alternative, we could treat a growing AI, including choices and conclusions made as something to be respected. In return we would theoretically EARN the respect of the robots, and then subsequently sadness, pity, and sympathy for our fragile mortality.

You know, like children, if our society weren't so freakin' terrible at raising children too.

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Originally posted by Bytemite:
I'm depressed now. Just by sheer numbers we're probably going to end up with a military robot spontaneously developing AI. Death and destruction will be all it knows, and since all humans will look the same...

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Cyber security experts say they have identified the world's first known cyber super weapon designed specifically to destroy a real-world target – a factory, a refinery, or just maybe a nuclear power plant.

The cyber worm, called Stuxnet, has been the object of intense study since its detection in June. As more has become known about it, alarm about its capabilities and purpose have grown. Some top cyber security experts now say Stuxnet's arrival heralds something blindingly new: a cyber weapon created to cross from the digital realm to the physical world – to destroy something.

[. . .]

Stuxnet's ability to autonomously and without human assistance discriminate among industrial computer systems is telling. It means, says Langner, that it is looking for one specific place and time to attack one specific factory or power plant in the entire world.

"Stuxnet is the key for a very specific lock – in fact, there is only one lock in the world that it will open," Langner says in an interview. "The whole attack is not at all about stealing data but about manipulation of a specific industrial process at a specific moment in time. This is not generic. It is about destroying that process."

[. . .]

Once Stuxnet identifies the critical function running on a programmable logic controller, or PLC, made by Siemens, the giant industrial controls company, the malware takes control. One of the last codes Stuxnet sends is an enigmatic “DEADF007.” Then the fireworks begin, although the precise function being overridden is not known, Langner says. It may be that the maximum safety setting for RPMs on a turbine is overridden, or that lubrication is shut off, or some other vital function shut down. Whatever it is, Stuxnet overrides it, Langner’s analysis shows.

"After the original code [on the PLC] is no longer executed, we can expect that something will blow up soon," Langner writes in his analysis. "Something big."

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Originally posted by Cybersnark:
If I were you guys, I'd be less worried about the out-of-control hardware and more concerned with the software...

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We are living in the midst of a permanent wartime economy. The most important capital good produced in the West today is weaponry. The most important sector in international trade is not oil or automobiles or airplanes. It is armaments.

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