AI

[Razzy]

Full independent thought and decision making processes are something I don't think we'll ever see from technology.

Basically, machines we build are limited by those who build them.

There are so many things about ourselves that we don't know and probably never will, so I don't see how a machine engineered by our hands will ever be able to be fully independent from us.

Which is why I think singularity is impossible or at least very far off when we might have quantum or DNA based computing. With a large enough "neural database", so to say, and programming that allows for "learning" by recording data and making choices based on analyzed probability you could probably design an AI that is good enough to fool most everyone. In my mind it is still just taking data, throwing dice, and reading answers, albeit in a highly fashioned way as to mimic human thought and emotion.

depends on how you want to define AI. If you are talking about "self-aware" humanoid type machines like in the Will Smith movie, i say we are probably 100 years away from that.

But, i think that machines that are capable of making fairley complex decisions without human input is right arund the corner, probably within the next decade.

Alot of ideas and inventions are the result of human warfare, and i am pretty sure that the future of unmanned vehicles such as predator drones are going to basically be UAVs that we set loose on battlefeilds that know how to select targets and then be able to apply the correct means of eliminating them all on their own. I also suspect that they will be able to automatically perform difficult tasks like refeuling and evading enemy attacks without input from humans.

Probably yes and no. You always need boots on the ground of course, especially in asymmetric warfare. The third world guarantees conventional arms aren't going anyway anytime either and bad dudes will still be running around with old Soviet AK-47's by the time we have laser guns. I think air power is heading that direction, simply because the ultimate limitation to an aircraft is the pilot. Remove the fragile human body from the equation and you get a faster and more maneuverable aircraft that will out turn and out gun anything in the air right now, but right now they are mostly built as slow low flying recon planes that would be shot down by conventional AA quite easily. The human element will remain as the decision maker. I'm thinking more of pilots flying via remote simulators that feel/look like cockpits.