“On July 28th, 2009 Skynet achieved self-awareness …”

South Korea just unveiled the first generation of autonomous robots armed with lethal weapons. They’ll eventually be deployed to help secure their 155-mile-long border with North Korea, and they come equipped with rubber bullets and machine guns. According to the Associated Press:

The robot also can distinguish people from moving objects such as a vehicles from up to 1.2 miles away in the daytime, and half that distance at night, the ministry said in a news release.

It can identify an enemy up to 30 feet away through a password, the news release said.

It also probably thinks humans taste like “bacon”.

(Thanks to Robot World Online for this one!)


blog comments powered by Disqus

Search This Site


Bio:

I'm Clive Thompson, a writer on science, technology, and culture. This blog collects bits of offbeat research I'm running into, and musings thereon.

Currently, I'm a contributing writer for the New York Times Magazine and a columnist for Wired magazine. I also write for Fast Company and Wired magazine's web site, among other places. Email or AOL IM me (pomeranian99) to say hi or send in something strange!

More of Me

Twitter
Tumblr
Flickr


Recent Entries

Teleportation, the last battle, and the Creator talks: How the world ends inside an online game

My latest Wired magazine column: Troll taming at Whitehouse.gov

Apparently NASA is filled with Joss Whedon fans

Incredibly weird, inch-wide single-celled creatures discovered rolling across the sea floor

In praise of the 3-hour game: My latest Wired News video-game column

» visit the Collision Detection archives

Clive Thompson's Tumblr
a bunch of stuff

March 25, 2009 » 05:10 PM
I had to ask! I was investigating getting DirecTV for my new office when I saw this pop-up window …

March 22, 2009 » 08:54 PM
““From an acoustical perspective, music is an overstructured language, which the brain invented and which the brain loves to hear.”” - Basics - In One Ear and Out the Other - NYTimes.com

March 20, 2009 » 04:48 PM
“No wonder young people find mainstream journalism uninviting; it would almost be more frightening if they embraced what passes for news today.” - The Death and Life of Great American Newspapers (Page 2)

March 19, 2009 » 01:12 PM
Printing The NYT Costs Twice As Much As Sending Every Subscriber A Free Kindle

March 18, 2009 » 08:44 PM
“Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” — Edward Abbey” - Via Thor Muller’s twitter stream.

» visit my Tumblr

Recent Comments

Photos

» see all of my photos on Flickr

Collision Detection: A Blog by Clive Thompson