Noel Sharkey

UK

Professor

I have to say that I found the round-up article about Sharkey's robot predictions very amusing (and well written) although perhaps just slightly misleading. Since I am the man himself, I just that I would be a killjoy and clarify my position. There are some serious issues at stake here.

The part about robot cops was fine although I did emphasise my concerns about the trade off between police and citizen safety with the erosion of personal privacy and basic human feedoms. The report was a warning as much as a prediction. You can download it from my web site: www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~noel

The terminator part is not so good. What I was doing there was to initiate an international public discussion about military plans around the world for allow "dumb" robots to apply lethal force without communicating with humans about it. This did not take much futurology as the US plans are published on the internet and the developments are accelerting on a weekly basis. If you look, you will also find that this is proliferating quickly.

I certainly did not predict any robot uprising or takeover and do not believe that machines will ever have the intelligence or motivation to beat us humans. My concern is with who controls the robots and not with the robots themselves. I don't want that to be small print.