Autonomous Weapon System : Idea Development
During my research, I came across to a Ted Talk video by Daniel Suarez. He talk about killer robots and the danger of letting the machines to kill autonomously. He also mentioned that through history, the way we resolve conflict shapes our social landscape. One of the examples that he showed was, how the design of a castle changed throughout the history with the inventions of new weapons. This made me think that if there will be a fully autonomous weapon system in the future, what will our city look like or how will we behave?
Stealth Wear by Adam Harvey
On one of my tutorial with Tobias, I showed him my idea which is, in the future, autonomous weapon system will be everywhere and we will wear something to prevent us from being shot and this will show how our everyday lives going to be changed in the future. Tobias told to me be more realistic and think about where is the scenario going to be. He showed me Adam Harvey’s Stealth wear where he designed a series of anti-thermal clothing and one of it was in a form of hijab. This is because the use of U.S Army drones in the Middle East where the use thermal imaging camera to track their target. Tobias also showed me another Adam Harvey’s work, which is the CV Dazzle. CV Dazzle explores how fashion can be used as camouflage from face-detection technology
CV Dazzle by Adam Harvey
Thus, this has led me to look into surveillance and facial recognition because If we and found out that, in 2011, the U.S handed out a half-dozen contracts to firms to find faces from above, track targets, and even spot “adversarial intent”. One of the firms would arm drones with facial recognition software that can remember faces so targets can't disappear into crowds. This clearly shows that the act of determining whether you are friend or foe could be turned over to the machines. Before we know, the government will use these inventions for their mass surveillance programme and this will invade our privacy.
