...Is it bad that I keep picturing those "roger roger" droids from Star Wars Episode I?
Starglider wrote:In high threat areas you wouldn't actually send the human squad leader in with the robots. They can just monitor the visual feeds and issue commands remotely from a safe location. Likewise for patrols, you wouldn't need to buch up a whole squad of robots around the human leader, you can send them out in singles or pairs and remotely monitor them (easier to ambush of course but at this price who cares).
For that matter, even if a robot gets ambushed, a large fraction of the time you'll be able to salvage/repair it at reasonable price. Repairing a robot that gets its fool head shot off is easier than repairing a human with the same problem.
Sea Skimmer wrote:But you can order the faceless robots simply never to return fire if a civilian would so much as be wounded, and just eat casualties no living troops could or would ever accept.
Sure although at this level of intelligence, civillian vs terrorist discrimination is not going to be any more sophisticated than 'is holding a gun'.
Eh, good enough. Step one: send B-52 overhead with one leaflet per citizen (better yet, three or four!) saying "Danger: do not carry a gun around our robot minions. They kill people who carry guns." Then send in the robots.
Borgholio wrote:Are the robots able to commit atrocities? That is, will they commit human rights violations or violate any rules of the Geneva Conventions if ordered to do so? Or are they hard-wired to obey the law and will refuse to obey an illegal order? If it's the latter, then I can see these guys be used for Police work too. Imagine cops that will not racially profile you, will not act in in aggressive fashion if they dislike the color of your skin, and will obey the same laws they are programmed to enforce. That's a good thing.
Are they smart enough to do that? It's not clear whether they're sentient. Just because the thing can talk doesn't mean it's got a mind. And nothing non-sentient or semi-sentient will be capable of being 'programmed to obey laws,' at least not in the human sense of the word 'law.'