Authorized. Lock it Down.

"Siri, kill that guy:  Drones might get voice controls."

Once again, Shlock Mercenary is ahead of the curve.

5 comments:

Eric Blair said...

I had one of those in games of 'Traveller' 30 years ago.

The best (so far) exploration of this is in Ian Banks' "Culture" novels. AI crewed warships that name themselves with names like "Frank Exchange of Views" and "I blame your mother".

MikeD said...

I don't understand this fascination with voice controls. When you're talking about a PED or other electronic device whose job it is it unobtrusively handle your tasks ("call mom", "set a reminder"). When you're talking about flying a plane, something that should be requiring your entire concentration, I don't think you want to wait for it to process your frantic "PULL UP! PULL UP!" before pulling up. Whereas pulling back on the stick requires less time, is more exact, and can't get the voice recognition software confused.

douglas said...

I suspect the drones are more appropriate for it as there has to be some time lag in the command sequence, since they're being flown from halfway around the world. It's less 'piloting' and more 'immediate short term scripting', I'd think.

Still, I've never been one to understand the fascination for voice control either.

Anonymous said...

If training drone-control software is anywhere as headache inducing as training dictation software, it'll never get off the ground, figuratively or literally.

I wonder if someone watched Ironman I and II once too often. J.A.R.V.I.S. is cute but I also remember a certain voice control computer that, well, "I'm sorry, Dave. I can't do that."

LittleRed1

MikeD said...

I wasn't even going to mention the problems with trying to train the voice recognition software. I'm sure it's better than it was when I last looked at it (the 90's) but really, I'm sure it's a factor as well. Then you throw in adrenaline and the operator shouting at the drone, and suddenly although you've trained the device to recognize "Evasive maneuvers," it's not going to know what "EVASIVMANUVERS!" means.