by Socrates
Part 3: The Present — close infantry support and force multiplier Not surprisingly, once robots began migrating from the production lines to the military, death became not an accidental but deliberate and heavily invested in outcome. In 2002 the Air Force officially changed the Predator’s designation from RQ-1 (R for reconnaissance) to MQ-1 (M for multi-use). Not just for intelligence gathering anymore, Predators were then officially capable of carrying hell-fire missiles. Even before the official change in its military designation, it was well known that the CIA had already possessed several Predators capable of carrying weapons and conducting bombing raids. So, whatever the official beginning, the Predator was probably the first modern actively armed robotic or unmanned war machine. The first officially reported person to have been deliberately killed by robot was Mohammed Atef. In November 2001 missiles fired from [...]
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by Socrates
Warfare, while seemingly the opposite of large scale industrial production, in so far as it is usually perceived to be large scale destruction, exhibits most if not all of the main characteristics of the capitalist mode of production. Features such as specialization, personal discipline within an ethos of team spirit, standardization of procedures, processes and products, are characteristic of both war and modern production. Whether it is more proper to say that warfare has been industrialized or that capitalist production has been militarized is an interesting and important question, yet regardless of the answer it is evident that robots can be successfully applied both to the production process of capitalism as well as the destruction process of war. Just like its cousin the manufacturing robot has the capacity to produce more products per unit of time compared to a worker, [...]
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Singularity Weblog is a journal of Nikola Danaylov's thoughts on trends, news, issues and people related to the 
