Why so few robot armys?

[Stark]

Do Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander count? Two universes that almost entirely rely on robotic armies to fight their wars.

He'll probably complain that since they're robots controlled by what were originally human intelligences, they don't count.

[Simon_Jester]

The primary problem with robotic armies is that, in my humble opinion at least, War is a fundamentally Human endeavour.

So what happens when you take Humans out of the equation and start building robots to crush, kill and destroy your enemy?

You need to make the Robot intelligent enough to be able to fight on par with Humans. That means it needs to recognise friends and foes, make independent decisions, develop strategy, be cognisant of a constantly changing situation and be capable of learning to deal with novel situations in addition to being able to use its environment to its advantage.

When you make a robot this intelligent, either the robot sees itself as superior and feels no need to obey its human masters, or it sees war for the illogical inefficient waste of time and resources that it is. Or both.

In any of those cases it effectively neutralises itself as the killing machine you want it to be. This is why we see so few robotic armies in fiction.

That raises an obvious question: why don't human soldiers do the same thing?

Suppose I can design a robot gun platform to do the job of a tank, with an onboard AI equal in intelligence to the human crew of a normal tank. Why would Robotank be more likely to decide "war does not compute" or "Crush the puny humans! Take over the world!" than a bunch of ordinary guys in a tank?

For that matter, you can get a lot of military performance out of machines that are not intelligent. Program them to shoot "red" things while ignoring or protecting "blue" things, and assign a team of intelligence analysts back at base to figure out which is which. We're already part way there with Predator drones buzzing around the Middle East lobbing antitank missiles at people we dislike; it wouldn't be that much more difficult to add more autonomy to the drones as computer technology improves.

And yet this drone isn't going to stop and think about philosophy, about why it fights or whether it should fly back to base and threaten to drop a bomb on the command center if its demands aren't met. It can't. Intelligence and self-reflection are not simple features, and are very unlikely to emerge in any system not designed to have them.

EDIT: Of course, sometimes human soldiers do decide war is inefficient and quit (in peacetime this is called "retiring;" in wartime, "mutiny"). And sometimes they do decide to turn on their 'creators' and take over the society that trained and armed them (also known as "military coup.")

But these things don't happen every single time, and there are well-known safeguards to keep it from inevitably destroying your military. So why can't there be similar safeguards to keep a robot army from doing the same things?

[Fluffy]

The reason we don't see more robotic armies in fiction is because they make bad characters; they usually have to be "humanized" to be engaging for the audience. Look at the Matrix's Agent Smith, the human disguises of the Terminator series, C-3P0, etc. Totally logical, emotionless robots are boring.

In terms of "in universe" logic, I think the risk of killer robot revolution/apocalypse would be the main factor to not build whole AI driven militaries. Think Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers.

[Alferd Packer]

There's also the consideration that human beings, generally, are extremely reluctant to kill other human beings, even when their own lives are threatened. This is why modern militaries spend huge amounts of effort to overcome this inherent disdain for taking human life, mainly through dehumanizing the enemy(whoever the enemy is).

An all-robot army, while being able to be programmed to be a remorseless juggernaut of slaughter, will not trigger this reluctance in its human opponents. By deploying a robot army, you automatically increase the effectiveness of your opponents. How much remorse are they going feel, say, deploying a massive EMP against 100,000 toasters? You've done the job of dehumanizing your army for your enemy. He can now direct resources he previously used for this purpose elsewhere. To make it worth your while, you need to take this into consideration and hope your robots are that much more effective...or, perhaps make them look human enough to make the enemy think twice.

Of course, if you are an alien species and deploying a robot army against humans, well, then you're probably just as well off doing so. You're already dehumanized in the eyes of your enemy, so you might as well take advantage of the infrastructure you have in place.

[lordofchange13]

Do Total Annihilation and Supreme Commander count? Two universes that almost entirely rely on robotic armies to fight their wars.

He'll probably complain that since they're robots controlled by what were originally human intelligences, they don't count.

Actually those are perfect examples of wholly robotic armies fighting for organisms.

[Norade]

The forerunners are extinct as a viable galactic power and possibly as a species and their technology is mostly out of commission. I have already smacked down Halo firepower and shown it to be in the low megaton range at the very highest and tens of kilotons at the average, these calculations apply to the forerunners as well and show that they're still a very low tier sci-fi race with laughably stupid leaders and a military with an IQ less than that of a lump of mud.

Weir did you get the information to make a weapons calc for the Forerunners? By my knowledge the only Forerunner weapon ever fired was The Line Installation 1-4(the Halo's them selves can not be counted)

Drones from Onyx firing at a Covenant ship, we can calculate firepower per drone based on What Covenant ships die to.

[Batman]

In terms of "in universe" logic, I think the risk of killer robot revolution/apocalypse would be the main factor to not build whole AI driven militaries..

Hardwire in some variation of Asimov's Four Laws or something. Problem solved. Unlike human beings, robots absolutely CAN be rendered utterly incapable of rising up against their makers.

[Norade]

There's also the consideration that human beings, generally, are extremely reluctant to kill other human beings, even when their own lives are threatened. This is why modern militaries spend huge amounts of effort to overcome this inherent disdain for taking human life, mainly through dehumanizing the enemy(whoever the enemy is).

An all-robot army, while being able to be programmed to be a remorseless juggernaut of slaughter, will not trigger this reluctance in its human opponents. By deploying a robot army, you automatically increase the effectiveness of your opponents. How much remorse are they going feel, say, deploying a massive EMP against 100,000 toasters? You've done the job of dehumanizing your army for your enemy. He can now direct resources he previously used for this purpose elsewhere. To make it worth your while, you need to take this into consideration and hope your robots are that much more effective...or, perhaps make them look human enough to make the enemy think twice.

Of course, if you are an alien species and deploying a robot army against humans, well, then you're probably just as well off doing so. You're already dehumanized in the eyes of your enemy, so you might as well take advantage of the infrastructure you have in place.

If your robots are tougher than humans why does it matter if the humans fire more often? They still need to use heavier weapons overall to do the job and they may be demoralized if you sent in mixed units so they didn't automatically bust out the heavy stuff right away. Also what will the EMP do a robot army? It's painfully easy to shield against with a simple copper cage around the sensitive bits.

[Simon_Jester]

You're kind of missing the point.

If the robots have a huge qualitative edge, it doesn't matter so much, as Alferd already pointed out. But unless we walk into the story presuming that robot armies will be invincible (as you do, but Alferd doesn't), you're still creating a disadvantage by turning your soldiers into faceless hordes for the enemy.

This may not be a huge thing, but it isn't irrelevant unless (again) you assume that robot soldiers are invincible. Very few stories wish to do this.

[lordofchange13]

The forerunners are extinct as a viable galactic power and possibly as a species and their technology is mostly out of commission. I have already smacked down Halo firepower and shown it to be in the low megaton range at the very highest and tens of kilotons at the average, these calculations apply to the forerunners as well and show that they're still a very low tier sci-fi race with laughably stupid leaders and a military with an IQ less than that of a lump of mud.

Weir did you get the information to make a weapons calc for the Forerunners? By my knowledge the only Forerunner weapon ever fired was The Line Installation 1-4(the Halo's them selves can not be counted)

Drones from Onyx firing at a Covenant ship, we can calculate firepower per drone based on What Covenant ships die to.

But how are we to know if the combined fire power even comes close to that used by a Forerunner ship?

[Norade]

But how are we to know if the combined fire power even comes close to that used by a Forerunner ship?

Covenant ships can kill other Covenant ships and these drones killed a Covenant ship, but needing hundreds of beams. We also know the pathetic outputs of Mac rounds (never actually seen firing at any fraction of c) and autocannons that can be dodged by jet fighters. We can also take calculations for a lower bound from when flood pods puncture a Covenant vessel.

[RedImperator]

You're kind of missing the point.

If the robots have a huge qualitative edge, it doesn't matter so much, as Alferd already pointed out. But unless we walk into the story presuming that robot armies will be invincible (as you do, but Alferd doesn't), you're still creating a disadvantage by turning your soldiers into faceless hordes for the enemy.

This may not be a huge thing, but it isn't irrelevant unless (again) you assume that robot soldiers are invincible. Very few stories wish to do this.

Wait, what? Since when do the robots have to be invincible? The space between "more effective than a human force" and "totally invincible" is pretty huge.

Look, there's too many assumptions you have to make to draw any kind of universal conclusion about the advantages of robots over humans or vice-versa, but most of the arguments I've seen in this thread just haven't been very convincing. Yeah, okay, fine, human soldiers won't hesitate to kill robots...but it's not like the robots are going to hesitate, either. And if you stop using robots, the enemy might hesitate to kill...but so will your guys, and you're right back where you started. This is a push, at best, not any kind of disadvantage for the side using robots.

Other arguments:

EMP isn't a magic off switch. It plays merry hell with civilian electronics, but hardening against it is not difficult to do. You have to accept a performance or cost tradeoff, but that's pretty much a given with military hardware. Nobody's going to send battle robots into the field with a weakness to EMP.

Robot revolt: if you're building human-level general AIs and you haven't figured out how to reliably keep them friendly, you're already in deep shit, robots or no robots. If your war robot AIs are willing to turn on their masters, then the odds are one of your earlier AIs was willing to, too, and has probably already escaped onto the Internet and self-modified itself into Colossus, Skynet, or AM. The way I see it, either you know how to keep AIs loyal or your war robots aren't smart enough to revolt.

War is illogical; the robots will never do it: give a computer the right set of goals, and you can make it do anything. Once again, if you're to the point of human-level general AI, either you know how to make it stick to the goals you've written for it, or you have bigger problems than disobedient robots. This is assuming you actually need human-level intelligence for a war robot; what if it doesn't have to be any smarter than a chimp? Or a monkey? Or a dog? Who knows? I don't, and you probably don't either.

The most interesting arguments probably revolve around potential software problems--the point of robots, after all, is that they're mass produced, so a hidden software error is repeated in ever robot--or we just don't trust our ability to program a reliably friendly AI. If you do have reliably friendly AI, then the first issue fixes itself, literally--the computers modify their own programming to eliminate the bugs. The second...it's a good reason not to do it, but I think it presumes too much self-restraint on the part of human societies. If GAI is possible, then it's going to be done. Look at nuclear weapons--they require a huge, highly visible industrial base to produce, expensive and difficult-to-acquire materials, and testing which is literally detectable by the entire world. And for all that, a pissant country like North Korea was able to build them against the wishes of the entire rest of the planet. GAI, on the other hand, could quite possibly be invented on some guy's laptop somewhere and released onto the Internet, and there'd be exactly fuck-all anyone could do about it. If a war robot AI can be built, somebody's going to build it, because the temptation of an army that doesn't sleep, eat, piss, complain, or leave grieving relatives behind when it dies is going to be too much to resist.

I guess somewhere in the middle of these two arguments lies the war robot that doesn't need to be as smart as a human and can't modify its own programming. Then, yeah, you could conceivably have a stuxnet kind of vulnerability. But on the other hand, the modern military is already tremendously reliant on computers--computers in many cases running Windows, for fuck's sake--and nobody's managed to take down the US Army with a computer virus (yet).

The cultural argument--we don't use robots because it's taboo/scary/God says we can't: that lasts until the first guy that's willing to ignore the taboo/fear/Word of God kicks the shit out of everyone else with his robot army.

The biggest real-world issue I can think of, besides the difficulty of actually developing the software, is the expense of the hardware. And for a society that can mass-produce robots on a scale large enough to actually use them as an army, I cannot possibly imagine how that cost would be more than the cost of raising a human from birth, training him, and feeding, paying, and housing him for however many years he's in the army (plus medical and pension costs for life, plus a survivors' pension if he dies, et cetera). No, I am not arguing that a robot would walk off the assembly line and then you'd never have to pay to maintain or supply it again. But personnel is always the biggest cost in any organization of more than a few people. This is entirely besides the other costs of human soldiers; political, ethical, opportunity...

In fiction, as many have already said, you don't see robot armies because they're difficult to empathize with. The in-universe reasons, if there are any at all, are usually either inherent to the setting (40k's robot-corrupting evil magic), some universally enforced cultural thing from Ye Olden Tymes that usually makes a point of being vague on details (Butlerian Jihad), or some arbitrary limitation that doesn't really make sense in-universe (the entire Federation can't duplicate the work of one guy working alone on a backwater colony). More often it's like Star Wars, where war droids just inherently suck for no real reason, or they just don't have war robots at all because of author fiat quantum.

[Shroom Man 777]

I really don't think that "the enemy will be less hesitant to shoot at our soldiers/robots" is a valid argument against robot armies. I mean, come on. Try to imagine it. They test this spiffy new weapons system, and try to list the advantages and disadvantages, and some guy goes "oh no, but the enemy will not be sympathetic to it!". Man, you can already see how hilarious that's gonna be.

Either way, you can still coat the robot in synthetic flesh in the likeness of Austrian body builders. If this argument also applies to UCAVs, with liberals blubbering about how using unmanned aircraft is dehumanizing, we can also coat Predator drones in synthetic flesh so they will fly around while having the shape, form and likeness of Austrian body builders. Or, to make them more aerodynamic, we can design the UCAVs to look like Robert Patrick.

Cruise missiles might also count. Imagine, Robert Patrick-shaped Tomahawk cruise missiles!

Or, to make the enemy really hesitate in shooting at our robots, because apparently that is a decisive military issue, we can use new Summer Glau-pattern camouflage! So our robots won't just be robots, but will be...

ROBOT RIVERS!!!!!



=^_____________________________________^=

[MKSheppard]

EMP isn't a magic off switch. It plays merry hell with civilian electronics

Um, no it doesn't. Civilian electronics are not that grossly vunerable to EMP. Hell, even digital computrons are only three times more vunerable than their equivalent analog computrons.

There are several ways electronics get hit by EMP:

1.) They're close enough to the EMP source that they are overwhelmed by it. This can be defeated by wrapping the vunerable electronics in metal coverings and carefully shielding any entrance points into that metal shield. You already see this with automotive electronics -- they have to be shielded from spark plug ignition.

2.) They are hooked up to an antenna which picks up the EMP and amplifies it. Obviously the bigger or longer the antenna is the more dangerous the induced EMP spike is. Obviously, this is why power lines pose the greatest threat; as they are very long. But you can build in suppressors on the antenna or power input to help make this less of a problem.

3.) They are exposed to an intense source of gamma and x-ray radiation. This causes metallic components of the device to emit current similar to EMP. This is called Internal EMP or IEMP. It was not accepted as happening until 1969.

In fact many of the industrial sites which suffered 'casualties' during the infamous STARFISH PRIME tests actually had the surge suppressors on their power input sources tripped. All it took to restore that machinery to operational status was to send someone to the factory to manually reset the circuit breakers and replace some fuzes.

The big difference between civilian RF and military RF hardening is that the military equipment is expected to operate within the zone of immediate destruction of a nuclear initation; where buildings are blown down, trees set on fire, and people absorb several hundred rads instantly.

[adam_grif]

I really don't think that "the enemy will be less hesitant to shoot at our soldiers/robots" is a valid argument against robot armies.

It's not just invalid, it's abysmal. You could argue the exact same thing about the use of UAV's, UGV's etc and to a lesser extent "faceless" but still manned war machines such as tanks and aircraft.

[bz249]

I really don't think that "the enemy will be less hesitant to shoot at our soldiers/robots" is a valid argument against robot armies.

It's not just invalid, it's abysmal. You could argue the exact same thing about the use of UAV's, UGV's etc and to a lesser extent "faceless" but still manned war machines such as tanks and aircraft.

I remember to read somewhere that British sailors (from the escorts) watched the final battle of battleship Bismarck and they completely forget that the thing is manned, until the burning crewmembers started jumping into the sea.

However we have a set of rules for war, like Geneva Conventions and similar stuff. Against a robotic army those are out of question.

[adam_grif]

Why would robots be unable to follow rules of war?

[bz249]

Why would robots be unable to follow rules of war?

Robots of course can follow, the rules of war, it's all about programming. But against robots why anyone would need any rule of war? They are just dumb machines, mere cannonfodders. So destroying robots en masse is a viable option. What is more, it is not only viable, but the efficient way.

[adam_grif]

Most of the rules of war are to prevent suffering against humans. If it's just robots, why is not having specific conventions banning chemical or bioweapons against the robots a "bad thing"? Why does it matter if they are legally allowed to mistreat and torture a non-sentient drone platform that doesn't feel pain?

I'm not sure how this is a drawback.

[Stark]

PROTIP: battles are fought over objectives and resources, which are often inhabited by civilians.

[Fluffy]

Hardwire in some variation of Asimov's Four Laws or something. Problem solved. Unlike human beings, robots absolutely CAN be rendered utterly incapable of rising up against their makers.

True, however there is always the risk of hacking, programming corruption, someone building without the rules, etc.

[Simon_Jester]

Look, there's too many assumptions you have to make to draw any kind of universal conclusion about the advantages of robots over humans or vice-versa, but most of the arguments I've seen in this thread just haven't been very convincing. Yeah, okay, fine, human soldiers won't hesitate to kill robots...but it's not like the robots are going to hesitate, either. And if you stop using robots, the enemy might hesitate to kill...but so will your guys, and you're right back where you started. This is a push, at best, not any kind of disadvantage for the side using robots.

OK, now there you have me.

[keen320]

Of course, once the war becomes really important/desperate to both sides (WW1 and 2 spring to mind), both sides frequently toss at least some of the rules of war out the window, at least after their opponents do. We follow them now because we can afford to, but in WW2 everyone was bombing civilians left and right. I'm pretty sure that's against the rules of war. IIRC, another piece of the Geneva convention said submarines should surface and warn their victims before firing. Guess how long that lasted. And on the WW2 Russian front, the rules of war were completely nonexistent. In really large (sometimes known as total) wars, many rules of war are ignored.

Of course, if cost is an issue, large wars like WW2 are exactly the kind you couldn't afford to use robots in.

[Junghalli]

The reason we don't see more robotic armies in fiction is because they make bad characters; they usually have to be "humanized" to be engaging for the audience. Look at the Matrix's Agent Smith, the human disguises of the Terminator series, C-3P0, etc. Totally logical, emotionless robots are boring.

Yeah, this. Robot armies are underrepresented in science fiction because it's easier to write drama with human armies. Any in-universe explanations are probably rationalizations the author thought up when he realized his setting might benefit from some kind of excuse for why robots are used less than they probably would be in a realistic society with zippy starships.

[lordofchange13]

But how are we to know if the combined fire power even comes close to that used by a Forerunner ship?

Covenant ships can kill other Covenant ships and these drones killed a Covenant ship, but needing hundreds of beams. We also know the pathetic outputs of Mac rounds (never actually seen firing at any fraction of c) and autocannons that can be dodged by jet fighters. We can also take calculations for a lower bound from when flood pods puncture a Covenant vessel.

That doesn't answer my question. All the instances you mentioned have nothing to do with what a Forerunner ship can do, we have never seen anything to even make a simple assumption. The sentential's are robots only a few meters in diameter, they use there weapons mostly to fight flood. They at best can be compared to fighters,or light bombers. Also there were only about 50 of them that destroyed the covenant ship. And to clarify the MAC rounds: they only get shot at high fractions of C when fired from a Orbital Defense Platform.