Thoughts in 140 characters

• 09:31 My electric toothbrush died, so now it's a regular toothbrush.
• 10:39 My supervisor is walking around having people smell the handle of a flashlight. Obivously my job has a lax work environment.
• 15:16 I've got a hot date with an ex-boyfriend tonight. Should we go see Coraline or Push?
• 16:49 Today's work discussion: What would happen if Gambit kinetically charged an atom bomb? The large hadron collider?
• 18:41 My dad was reading a list of South Park episodes available for him to watch on his BlackBerry out loud. He stumbled over the word "penis".
• 19:30 Yay my order from BAF came in! My septum is now at an 8g, and my eyes won't stop watering.
• 00:47 I'm wearing an Obama shirt in a redneck bar. Not the best decision I've ever made, but I can think of worse!
• 02:11 Drunk twitted lolilolol!
• 02:29 I love having fun
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• 02:30 Okay so Aarika sent the last one. What I meant to say was I love having tits. I drink for free!
• 05:18 Safe at home, vow unbroken. See you tomorrow.

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It's the future!

Military’s killer robots must learn warrior code

Autonomous military robots that will fight future wars must be programmed to live by a strict warrior code or the world risks untold atrocities at their steely hands.

The stark warning – which includes discussion of a Terminator-style scenario in which robots turn on their human masters – is issued in a hefty report funded by and prepared for the US Navy’s high-tech and secretive Office of Naval Research .

The report, the first serious work of its kind on military robot ethics, envisages a fast-approaching era where robots are smart enough to make battlefield decisions that are at present the preserve of humans. Eventually, it notes, robots could come to display significant cognitive advantages over Homo sapiens soldiers.

“There is a common misconception that robots will do only what we have programmed them to do,” Patrick Lin, the chief compiler of the report, said. “Unfortunately, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to a time when . . . programs could be written and understood by a single person.” The reality, Dr Lin said, was that modern programs included millions of lines of code and were written by teams of programmers, none of whom knew the entire program: accordingly, no individual could accurately predict how the various portions of large programs would interact without extensive testing in the field – an option that may either be unavailable or deliberately sidestepped by the designers of fighting robots.

The solution, he suggests, is to mix rules-based programming with a period of “learning” the rights and wrongs of warfare.

A rich variety of scenarios outlining the ethical, legal, social and political issues posed as robot technology improves are covered in the report. How do we protect our robot armies against terrorist hackers or software malfunction? Who is to blame if a robot goes berserk in a crowd of civilians – the robot, its programmer or the US president? Should the robots have a “suicide switch” and should they be programmed to preserve their lives?

The report, compiled by the Ethics and Emerging Technology department of California State Polytechnic University and obtained by The Times, strongly warns the US military against complacency or shortcuts as military robot designers engage in the “rush to market” and the pace of advances in artificial intelligence is increased.

Any sense of haste among designers may have been heightened by a US congressional mandate that by 2010 a third of all operational “deep-strike” aircraft must be unmanned, and that by 2015 one third of all ground combat vehicles must be unmanned.

“A rush to market increases the risk for inadequate design or programming. Worse, without a sustained and significant effort to build in ethical controls in autonomous systems . . . there is little hope that the early generations of such systems and robots will be adequate, making mistakes that may cost human lives,” the report noted.

A simple ethical code along the lines of the “Three Laws of Robotics” postulated in 1950 by Isaac Asimov, the science fiction writer, will not be sufficient to ensure the ethical behaviour of autonomous military machines.

“We are going to need a code,” Dr Lin said. “These things are military, and they can’t be pacifists, so we have to think in terms of battlefield ethics. We are going to need a warrior code.”

Isaac Asimov’s three laws of robotics

1 A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm

2 A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law

3 A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law

Introduced in his 1942 short story Runaround

(no subject)

Remember when Joaquin Phoenix was hot?

Please go back to being hot again. :(

DeMarcus Ware is dumb.

WARE SAYS RAY WANTS TO “WEAR THE STAR”

Amid rampant speculation that Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis will sign a free-agent contract with the Dallas Cowboys at some point after free agency opens in little more than five days, Cowboys linebacker DeMarcus Ware says that Lewis has made clear his desire to play in Dallas.

In an interview with the team’s official web site, Ware was remarkably candid about the situation.

“[W]hen we played Ray Lewis and Baltimore at the end of the season,” Ware said, “he came over and pointed to my helmet. He said, ‘I want to wear this star on my helmet, that’s my dream . . . that’s my dream.’ When we got to the Pro Bowl, he did it again. He came at me every day. It’s a great opportunity for him. His door is open. He’s an unrestricted free agent. He’s trying to get down where the star is. He told me he needed me to get him Jerry Jones’ phone number for him. I just busted out laughing.”

And Ware doesn’t think Lewis is merely trying to leverage Baltimore into giving him more money. “I think he is genuine,” Ware said. “Believe me, he is genuine. He talked to me before he became a free agent. He talked to me two years ago about it. He calls me about once a week and talks about it then. I even said, ‘Hey, Ray, I’m tired about talking about this. You need to find Jerry Jones’ number and fly out there and talk to him. . . . He says things like ‘D-Ware, I need to get down there. You’re the pass-rush guy and I need to play with you. Just call Jerry for me. Just call him. Just call him.’”

We first suspected that the Cowboys might make a play for Lewis when the team signed his brother, running back Keon Lattimore, to a free-agent contract after the 2008 draft. Though Lattimore didn’t stick with the Cowboys, we’ll find out soon enough whether it was a precursor to making a play for Keon’s big brother.

Ray Lewis will never leave the Ravens, because the Ravens won't let him go. They'll throw so much money at him his head will spin.