The security of an autonomous system, which consists of autonomous entities, could be compromised as a result of a physical or electronic attack. The compromise of information assets such as a system’s processing base or its communications links could potentially place an enemy ahead in terms of the OODA (Observe, Orient, Decide and Act) loop; it is this aspect of electronic warfare, which is c...

symposia in 1997 honoring the fictional birth year of the HAL-9000 computer. The other two were held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Illinois at Urbana, which is also the fictional birthplace of HAL. Our meeting was distinguished by reports on actual ongoing work toward building intelligent spacecraft. Representing government were attendees from the Nati...

To understand the physical and biological relationships often requires high resolution sampling far exceeding present capabilities. If spatially adaptive sampling can be developed, data resolution can be greatly improved over that presently possible with conventional sensor platforms. One technique to achieve both spatially and temporally adaptive sampling is an Autonomous Oceanographic Samplin...

An autonomous system is postulated here as a collection of cooperating heuristics. The goal of such a system is to become expert in a particular domain by solving problems there. The system develops by analyzing the performance of its heuristics, and changing its decision process to reflect its knowledge about them. Metaknowledge metrics are postulated both to evaluate the system’s developing e...

Both the ethics of autonomous systems and the problems of their technical implementation have by now been studied in some detail. Less attention has been given to the areas in which these two separate concerns meet. This paper, written by both philosophers and engineers of autonomous systems, addresses a number of issues in machine ethics that are located at precisely the intersection between e...

We define a lossless autonomous system as one having a quadratic differential form associated with it called an energy function, which is positive and which is conserved. We define an oscillatory system as one which has all its trajectories bounded on the entire time axis. In this paper, we show that an autonomous system is lossless if and only if it is oscillatory. Next we discuss a few proper...

We discuss the problem of privacy in autonomous systems, introducing different conceptualizations and perspectives on privacy to assess the threats that autonomous systems may pose to privacy. After this, we outline technical and legal measures that should be put in place to mitigate these threats. Beyond privacy threats and countermeasures, we also argue how autonomous systems may be, at the s...