Cool and scary at the same time. I had a long discussion yesterday with a fellow tech-head about our personal interests (robotics, image/facial recognition algorithms) and what started off as a joke (i.e. programming a flying drone to harass an individual at a party by recognising their face and never leaving them alone) turned into something more serious. The bottom line is that we always end up thinking about military applications, which then become crime-fighting and security applications, which then become criminal applications.
Paranoia aside, the technology now exists to build a flying machine which identifies an individual and tranquillises them (or executes them). Is there any purpose in anyone building something like this? I seem to remember a rather large-scale hunt for men like Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. You could argue it was in the public interest to catch these men (depend upon which country's public you are). But if this technology became publicly available? Do we want a situation where murder can be committed in absentia by a device with no DNA, no fingerprints and which can soar out of human reach, or ditch itself somewhere hard to find (i.e. out at sea).
Is it normal my parents named me after a terrible song?
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Cool and scary at the same time. I had a long discussion yesterday with a fellow tech-head about our personal interests (robotics, image/facial recognition algorithms) and what started off as a joke (i.e. programming a flying drone to harass an individual at a party by recognising their face and never leaving them alone) turned into something more serious. The bottom line is that we always end up thinking about military applications, which then become crime-fighting and security applications, which then become criminal applications.
Paranoia aside, the technology now exists to build a flying machine which identifies an individual and tranquillises them (or executes them). Is there any purpose in anyone building something like this? I seem to remember a rather large-scale hunt for men like Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. You could argue it was in the public interest to catch these men (depend upon which country's public you are). But if this technology became publicly available? Do we want a situation where murder can be committed in absentia by a device with no DNA, no fingerprints and which can soar out of human reach, or ditch itself somewhere hard to find (i.e. out at sea).
Scary stuff.