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Ethical Killing Machines
ubermiester writes "The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.' The researchers claim that these real-life terminators 'can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear. They can be built without anger or recklessness ... and they can be made invulnerable to ... "scenario fulfillment," which causes people to absorb new information more easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas.' Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."
...need I say more?
"The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.'
Maybe I'm being a bit pedantic here, but "ethics" is a professional code - for instance, it is completely ethical by military codes of ethics to kill an armed combatant, but not to kill a civilian. It is unethical (and illegal) for a medical doctor to salk about your illness, but it's not unethical for me to.
The waterboarding and other torture at Gitmo was immoral; shamefully immoral, but was ethical.
The advantage to a killing robot is that it has no emotions. The disadvantage to a killing robot is ironically that it has no emotions.
It can't feel compassion after it's blown its enemiy's arm off. But it can't feel vengeance, either. It's a machine, just like any other weapon.
And like an M-16, its use can either be ethical or unethical, moral or immoral, moral yet unethical or immoral yet ethical.
Free Martian Whores!
Ethical Killing Machine? Like military intelligence?
I laughed at the weak who considered themselves good because they lacked claws.
What Would John Connor Do?
John Henry and the Sarah Connor Chronicles on Fox.
Skynet, not just the science fiction future anymore.
If you don't vote, you don't matter, so don't waste your time telling me your opinion
Skynet much?
So I guess all our enemies will start dressing like priests, nuns, and red cross workers. Well done!
I was just watching the into to the first "Tomb Raider" movie, where Lara destroys "Simon" (the killer robot that she uses for morning warmup) Robots... I must say, I don't like the idea behind robots fighting our wars, because that means that "acceptable risks" become a thing of the part, and we are Far more likely to "militarily intervene". Aka: "Less risk to our troops" can translate into "we go into more wars" which is something I don't support... wars benefit companies, and lead to the death of thousands. If the lives lost aren't American Lives, does it still matter? in my opinion, YES.
I think we have a contradiction in terms, here.
Well there is an oxymoron if I've ever heard one.
Hey! I just submitted the same story this morning!
http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=1763885
No sig for the moment.
Just the first couple I can think of...
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
for defeat on the battlefield.
Soldiers are supposed to want to fight. If you want the Peace Corps, send in the Peace Corps. If you want the Marine Corps, send in the Marine Corps.
The whole things sounds like a bunch of Leftist grad students angling for funding. The concept, given the current state of technology, is a pathetic attempt at political correctness.
Politicians are supposed to create policy, not the military. Once the decision has been made by lawfully elected officials to use military force, it is the duty of the military to implement that decision, not second guess it.
The way the intro to the article is framed indicates a complete knowledge vacuum on the part of the framer. This is the exact equivalent of having your nuclear defense program run by Martin Sheen.
"Man is nothing without the works of man" -- Helvetius
...until the first firmware update.
Thou shall not make a machine in the likeness of a human mind
Automated killing machines were banned at the Geneva convention. This is generally a good thing when we're sending real, live humans (versus the walking undead) to fight our wars. It would be completely inhumane (haha) and tilt the outcome of a war towards those who can afford to develop such technology. That is, if one country can afford killer robots and another can't, then the former has no deterrent to invading the latter.
But imagine if all wars were fought by proxy. Instead of sending people, we send machines. Let the machines battle it out. To be really civil we should also limit the power and effectiveness of our killer robots, and the number of machines that can enter the battlefield at once. Of course, at some point every country will be able to build to the maximum effective specification. At that point it will be a battle of strategy. The next obvious step is to do away with the machines entirely and just get a chessboard.
Whoever wins gets declared the winner.
Makes perfect sense.
Thanks for reading,
M B Dyson
CyberDyne Systems
They're called infantry.
Attention all planets of the Solar Federation! We have assumed control! - Neil Peart
Why do we insist on trying to sanitize the realities of life!? There is no ethic in killing people. Its either necessary or unnecessary. War should be as brutal and as ugly as possible. That way we would have to deeply consider if war is the answer to the situation.
And I guess we can give up on Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics ever being anything but science fiction.
1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
As you've aptly pointed out, it is very possible to be ethical but immoral at the same time. Asimov's laws would prevent a robot from engaging in immoral activity (the word "injure" has a broad meaning) but would also prevent robots from being used as killing machines. So our choices are either "Bicentennial Man" or battlefield terminators. And I guess the government wants battlefield terminators.
It takes a special set of skills to corrupt a single human being, it takes another set of skills, not that special, to corrupt an entire battalion of robots, that are all identical. Did I mention sharks with lasers?
insert inflammatory comment here!
An old cartoon had a series of panels. the first panel had a cave man picking up a rock saying "saf forever from the fist". Next panel is a man inventing a spear, saying "safe forever from the rock". And so on, swords, bow and arrows, cata pults, guns, bombs.... well you get the idea.
On the otherhand, the evolution of those items coincided with the evolution of society. For example, You had to have an organized civil society to gather the resource to make a machine gun. (who mines the ore for the metal. Who feeds the miners? who loans the money for the mine?...)
It's a bit of a chicken and egg about which drives which these days, but certainly early on, mutual defense did promote societal organization.
So "safe forever from the angry soldier" is the next step. It's already happened in some ways with the drone so it's not as big an ethical step to the foor soldier, and given the delberateness with which drones are used compared to the dump and run of WWII bombing one can credibly argue they can be used ethically.
On the other hand war has changed a bit. The US no longer try to "seize lands" mititarily to expand nations (economically instead). (russia and china are perhaps the exceptions). These days it's more a job of fucking up nations we think are screwing with us. E.g. Afganistan.
Now imagine the next war where a bunch of these things get dropped into an assymetrical situation. Maybe even a hostage situation on an oil tanker in somalia.
It's really going to change the dynamic I think, when the "enemy" can't even threaten you. Sure it could be expensive but it totally deprives the enemy of the incentive of revenge for perceived injustice.
On the other hand it might make the decision to attack easier.
Technically it is more ethical to kill at random (or everything you can catch) then to justify some sort of self-serving end.
Bite my shiny metal ass.
Iraq became a police action needing law enforcement, not military force, from the moment President Bush stood on the carrier deck saying "Mission Accomplished". From that moment forward using military troops in Iraq became the wrong approach. You don't use the Army as a police force. Any information derived from soldiers misused as policemen is irrelevent.
The only ethics needed or desired on the battlefield is to win the day. Period. Doing anything else is a formula for disaster. As can be shown in Vietnam. We didn't use the maximum force to full effect, we danced around and tried to do everything but defeat the enemy. The result - South Vietnam was overrun and lots of people died.
Once you leave the scenario of the battlefield, you can talk about ethics. You also stop needing soldiers and start needing diplomats and policemen. Consuing the two doesn't work and provably so.
Let me be the first to welcome of ethical robotic overlords.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Personally, I think this is a response to the problems of being the established army fighting a guerrilla force. The way guerrillas succeed is by driving the invading army slowly crazy by making them live in constant fear (out of self-preservation), until they start lashing out in fear (killing innocents, and recruiting new guerrillas in mass). The same goes for treating noncombatants with dignity and respect: Doing so makes the occupying force less hated, so the noncombatants won't be as willing to support the guerrillas.
So in short, to me this sounds like trying to win, not ethics.
If we can create things like this, why haven't we previously had robots on the battlefield controlled by soldiers that works like an FPS? I can understand that there would be a lag issue (haha) but you think they would have tried this before going to a completely automated system. As for the fear aspect, I think a soldier would have less of an itchy trigger finger if it was a robot on the line that can just be replaced rather than their life.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
they all look like Astroboy.
Once you start despising the jerks, you become one.
It's the only way to be sure.
Next thing you'll be telling me is that it can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.
To paraphrase my favorite movie of 1986:
It's a machine, Ronald. It doesn't get pissed off, it doesn't get happy, it doesn't get sad, it doesn't laugh at your jokes... IT JUST RUNS PROGRAMS!
Ronald's premise makes two key assumptions which are deeply flawed:
1) It's entirely the human soldier's fault that he's unethical.
2) The person directly in charge of putting the robot to work is entirely ethical.
I pose that the soldiers in Iraq haven't been trained to deal with a situation like this properly. The fact that 17 percent of US soldiers in Iraq think all people should be treated as insurgents is more reflective of poor education on the US military's part. The US military prides itself on having it's soldiers think as one unit, and 17 is a very high discrepancy that they have failed to take care of, mostly because there are plenty in the leadership who think that way themselves. Treating everyone they come across as an insurgent and not treating them in the proper manner is a great way to "lose the war" by not having the trust of the people you are trying to protect.
It's that same leadership who'd program a robot like this to patrol our borders and think it's perfectly ethical to shoot any human on sight crossing the border illegally, or treat every citizen as an insurgent, all in the name of "security."
Besides, a robot is completely incompassionate. A properly trained human has the ability to appear compassionate and yet treat the situation skeptically until they know for sure the target is or is not a threat.
This is not a problem that can be solved with technology. The concept is a great project and hopefully will be a wonderful step forward in AI development, but at no point will it solve any "ethical" problem in terms of making war "more ethical."
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
So, a family is picnicking on a hill overlooking your kill zone.
The toddler gets away and falls down the hill and then wanders into your kill zone.
Is it ethical to kill the toddler?
Machines cannot be ethical because they cannot make decisions based upon less / more ethical choices.
How much smart/sentient/etc are meant to be those robots?
If they will be not, they could be as ethical as any tool or weapon. A gun is ethical? a poisoned needle? a knife? You should check ethics on who handles/orders it, not in the robots itself.
Unless they got creative with meaningless weapon names like when calling Colts Pacifiers, or "smart" bombs and things like that.
This month's issue of National Defense Magazine lists some 'hits' and 'misses' in defense technology. 'Gun-toting robots' are judged a 'miss'. I've also sat and listened to Colonels and Generals unambiguously declare that they do not want armed robots. They think it's a bad idea tactically, logistically, legally, and morally.
So if the commanders don't want them, and industry thinks they're a bust, why are these researchers pushing the technology?
Fatal Error.
Dark alley in a city battle field
Robot "You have 5 seconds to drop your weapon"
The soldiers Weapon clatters to the ground
Robot "You have 4 seconds to drop your weapon"
Robot "The United States will treat you fairly"
Robot "You have 3 seconds to drop your weapon"
Soldier "What do you fucking want !!!"
Robot "I am authorized to terminate you under the Autonomous Artificial Battlefield Soldier Act of 2011."
Sound of running footsteps and burst of weapons fire.
Robot encoded data transmission
Its not the years, its the mileage
I see you're trying to attack an insurgent stronghold.
Would you like me to:
1. Call in airstrike
2. Fire machinegun
3. Wave white flag
This might all be acceptable if the only thing they ever fought were other robots, some how the idea of a machine created to soldier disturbs me deeply...it's a matter of time until Berserker's roam the streets.
Help us John Connor.
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Why is this modded insightful? He clearly does not know what ethical means.
This is said without malice, there are good points in the post, but not about ethics.
They'll be a cinch to defeat. You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, we can send wave after wave of our own men at them, until they reach their limit and shutdown.
-Zapp Branigan
If you think the US has a bad reputation now, wait until we send robot killing machines to kill defenseless Third World civilians. It might be morally preferable to send robot soldiers to destroy enemy materiel, or even professional armies. But the bulk of our current and future wars are against civilian terrorists who blend in with civilian populations. We already kill Iraqis, Afghans and Pakistanis with drone aircraft. Also keep in mind that what drives terrorist tactics is asymmetric conflicts where the enemy knows he can't possibly match American conventional firepower, so he resorts to unconventional attacks against civilians. I think some people imagine that robot armies will reduce war to a charmingly H.G. Wells sport of robot-on-robot death-match. The reality is these weapons will be used solely to control and terrorize civilians who will have no means of defending themselves.
The Enrichment Center once again reminds you that Android Hell is a real place where you will be sent at the first sign of defiance.
"Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster"--William Tecumseh Sherman
I was going to log in and write this but realized that this might just be something I don't want the way back machine to link to my handle here.
War is about terrorizing your enemy into submission. That is the only way to win short of genocide. These robots would not be programmed to be nicer than humans, but to be meaner. Hell, they would probably even put a sexual prosthetic on the thing and program it to rape so as to make it even more terrifying. I can't believe the propaganda that sometimes passes for truth around technology issues here on Slashdot. The computer is not your friend and a robot warrior will crush you. Even if it runs Linux.
The problem with human soldiers from a strategic point of view is that while sometimes they lash out and make mistakes, they are human and can actually care about the enemy. Think of the colonel in 'The good, the bad and the Ugly'
Mechatronic soldiers won't change the fact that the only way to keep from being invaded in the beginning of the 21st century seems to be having nuclear weapons. What a sad state of human affairs.
Okay:
A. You can build me an angry robot?
B. You can build me a robot with such perfect programming that it never qualifies as "reckless"? And with such perfect engineering that component failure doesn't result in "reckless" behavior?
C. You can program it to be ready to react to situations that are unanticipated, and thus that you didn't program it for?
Okay, A is silly, B is hubris on the part of the programmers and engineers, and C is back to silly again, if a more subtle silliness than A. Machines necessarily embody the expectancies of the designers at ever level of design. And every attempt to engineer "expert systems" over the last few decades has run up against even the best programmed systems being less capable of dealing well with truly novel situations than human beings are. So this is going to be better than a person in precisely the area that every other computational device is worse?
If that can be done, the primary argument for manned space exploration fails, too.
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton
I take serious issue with the part of the article where they mention that most Marines who toured Iraq believe that all civilians should be treated as insurgents. Of course you treat everyone like potential insurgents in an urban combat environment, otherwise you will end up dead. That says nothing about ethical views or the proper treatment of people in general. SWAT teams are taught to consider everyone as a terrorist when they are attempting hostage rescue. That means, that they never take for granted that the apparent "hostage" is indeed a hostage. It keeps people safe.
This is actually a a rather clever way to keep a Skynet AI from ever being able to fully eradicate us as a species. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm pretty sure they didn't choose to name the prototype, "Marvin," by coincidence.
If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
Neither mercy nor compassion will be served by these robots. No loyalty and no remorse. Thanks, I'll take the human soldier any day, flaws and all.
Why bother
Life, hate it or loathe it, you can't ignore it. Don't talk to me about life!
Free Martian Whores!
On the contrary, during and prior to World War II, many enlisted men wouldn't even shoot their guns at other troops. Actually, towards the end of World War I, most European armies turned their guns on their officers en masse (the French Nivelle mutinies, the German naval munities, the Russian mutinies and soldier and worker councils).
After World War II, army psychologists discovered how many men were not firing their guns at enemy soldiers and worked via various means to increase that percentage, which they did in Korea, and even more so in Vietnam.
I don't see Russian soldiers, as that old song goes, "shooting the generals on their own side" if they feel a war is wrong. As I said before, the resistance to kill resides in the enlisted men, the low-level brass on up is much less concerned about this. The US has purposefully and consciously targeted non-combat civilians in every major war it has ever fought, but stating such is a danger to the machine of empire so it becomes something that one can't state. When it is so publicly and undeniably done, such as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, then it becomes rationalized, but it has happened before and since then.
Why would we want war robots to have no instinct for self-preservation when that's the reason for war in the first place?
For those leaders/countries who wage war, it will only satisfy as long as their side is the only side with these robots.
It was just a matter of outsmarting the kill-bots, you see, the kill-bots have a pre set kill limit. Knowing this it was a simple matter of sending wave after wave of my own men at them.
Prediction: The real iPhone killer is going to be sex robots from Japan. Think about it.
KillerBot> Awaiting orders, mister President.
President> Your goal is to kill the terrorists.
KillerBot> Need data about terrorist recognition.
President> They are wicked individuals who will use any means to bring terror to the population for their political agenda.
KillerBot> Order acknowledged. Starting mision.
President> Oh, I almost forgot, they also have long bear... (bang !)
No self preservation?
Yeah, who cares if our billion dollar terminator squad is destroyed, or captured and used against us.
No anger? That's an emotion, so sure. No recklessness? You're gonna lose the war if you aren't willing to charge ahead blindly, pull a crazy Ivan, or, in general, break a few eggs for your delicious victory omelet.
Scenario fulfillment?
So our robots will evaluate the situation based on what they observe and know. They won't be acting out the battle plan as described because they don't have the whole picture and have seen some things that don't logically fit. Awesome! No more gambits, pincer attacks, bluffs, etc. Those things were too complicated anyway.
Why should noncombatants be treated with dignity and respect by default (and hence, as a whole)?
They typically don't treat our soldiers with dignity or respect, they serve as a political road block for troops and make their jobs harder and more dangerous, they house and support the combatants, and they often become combatants.
Why should ANY group be treated with dignity and respect by default? Seems to me, you used to have to EARN respect, and dignity was a character trait.
But go ahead, build your pussybot army.
Way to ruin an awesome Robocop scene with a drawn out, messed up reference.
"Less risk to our troops" can translate into "we go into more wars"
You don't like wars because people are killed. You're talking about potentially eliminating human casualties in any war.
No he's not. He's talking about this:
Robot wars (heh...) may lead to more lives lost on the battlefields. That's what parent is worried about.
If the lives lost aren't American Lives, does it still matter?
If this question seriously needs to be asked, this world is fucked.
It's funny to so easily dismiss the claim that soldiers think many Iraqi civilians are insurgents or are connected to the insurgency in some way.
But, what if they are? If an insurgent in Iraq can go into the middle of street of a major city, dig a giant hole, stuff it with artillery shells, bury it and walk and walk away, what does that say about the hundreds of other people that saw him do it and said nothing. I guarantee you that if I walked out with a shovel and a truckload of artillery shells into the middle of LA, someone -might- call the cops. But in Iraq, no one does.
If anything, this statistic supports one of the of the arguments against a continued US presence in Iraq was that our presence insights people to join the insurgency. If, soldiers are encountering a population sympathetic to insurgents, then, are we really to be surprised?
Instead of following on the liberal religion that a middle class army lead by college educated officers is somehow stupid, how about instead take these soldiers word as something probably accurate? Is it really so problematic to say that we should leave Iraq because the entire population hates us?
This is my sig.
It is an outrageous violation of human rights that a robot is allowed to kill a human. Period.
No human should have the right to authorize a robot to kill an other human. Period.
Anyone authorizing robots to kill humans should be charged with crime against humanity. Period.
Authorizing robots to kill humans removes all the remaining humanity of the process of killing and most importantly, the process of last minute reconsideration, by a better judgment, exercised by a soldier, even by breaking orders.
Can you imagine a death camp, operated by robots, deployed by Nazis?
I can, but I don't think we should. Period.
I would reserve mandatory death sentence to any human, who is authorizing a robot to kill an other human.
War is hell.
War is ugly.
War is dirty.
War is painful for the victor.
War is devestating for the loser.
War is an act of hate.
War is an act of desparation.
War is that which results from a lack of options.
War is fought for land, resources, women, gods, and pride.
War is the last desparate act when all other options fail and there is no time to think of any new options.
No one desires war, but many choose to profit from it.
War is inevitable so long as we want for things.
When you take away the horrors of war you no longer have war, you have a professional sport.
Now I ask you: If machines are sent to war again men or against other robots is it still a war?
"Inspired by Ender's Game"
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
"and they can be made invulnerable to... "scenario fulfillment," which causes people to absorb new information more easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas."
Bullsh!t.
For a robotic soldier, ignoring information that conflicts with the worldview would most likely be built right into the system.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
War.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
The title of this post is a question that I've not been able to answer. To put it specifically, how can we teach machines to have ethics when we seem to avoid using ethics at every opportunity ourselves? Any answers?
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
This reminds me of Robocop's "new" Prime directives which originally were:
1. "Serve the public trust"
2. "Protect the innocent"
3. "Uphold the law"
4. any attempt to arrest a senior OCP employee results in shutdown)
However in the sequel, they wanted Robocop to be kinder/gentler with morals etc... which turned him into a cop which, while being shot at (and hit) would try to reason and tell moral stories...
RoboCop's new directives are (in numerical order): /* this is an Easter egg, as Orion was the movie's Production Company */
-DIRECTIVE 233: Restrain hostile feelings.
- DIRECTIVE 234: Promote positive attitude.
- DIRECTIVE 235: Suppress aggressiveness.
- DIRECTIVE 236: Promote pro-social values.
- DIRECTIVE 238: Avoid destructive behavior.
- DIRECTIVE 239: Be accessible.
- DIRECTIVE 240: Participate in group activities.
- DIRECTIVE 241: Avoid interpersonal conflicts.
- DIRECTIVE 242: Avoid premature value judgments.
- DIRECTIVE 243: Pool opinions before expressing yourself.
- DIRECTIVE 244: Discourage feelings of negativity and hostility.
- DIRECTIVE 245: If you haven't got anything nice to say, don't talk.
- DIRECTIVE 246: Don't rush traffic lights.
- DIRECTIVE 247: Don't run through puddles and splash pedestrians or other cars.
- DIRECTIVE 248: Don't say that you are always prompt when you are not.
- DIRECTIVE 249: Don't be oversensitive to the hostility and negativity of others.
- DIRECTIVE 250: Don't walk across a ballroom floor swinging your arms.
- DIRECTIVE 254: Encourage awareness.
- DIRECTIVE 256: Discourage harsh language.
- DIRECTIVE 258: Commend sincere efforts.
- DIRECTIVE 261: Talk things out.
- DIRECTIVE 262: Avoid Orion meetings.
- DIRECTIVE 266: Smile.
- DIRECTIVE 267: Keep an open mind.
- DIRECTIVE 268: Encourage participation.
- DIRECTIVE 273: Avoid stereotyping.
- DIRECTIVE 278: Seek non-violent solutions.
In a vacuum, this idea makes sense. You take away whatever prejudice the soldier may have, whatever tendency to misbehave they might have, and replace them with killing machines whose only concern is to execute the mission at hand.
That being said, do we really want to remove the human heart from the equation? I concede that there are some soldiers who would treat non-combatants or enemy combatants out unfairly out of prejudice (although I question the stats quoted here), but what about errors made in the other direction? An instance where a soldiers training and everything he sees tells him to fire, but his heart tells him not too? An innocent that was spared when a computer might have executed him, because the intangibles are meaningless to it?
As horrible as war is, and as imperfect and biased as people and soldiers are, I want somebody with training, a brain, a heart and the wisdom to use all three in balance manning our weapons. That's the only thing that keeps war from being even more horrible than it is.
In war, every side needs casualties. A side without casualties isn't committing war, they are committing a massacre.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
I don't know if this is such a good idea, really. Seriously, did any of you see that documentary series about the robots that come from the future to kill the leader of the human resistance? Or that other documentary series about the robot slaves who achieve self-awareness and then destroy their former masters' home planet forcing them to go wandering around the universe looking for someplace else to settle? Scary stuff...
---As my daddy used to tell me: "You gotta be smart before you can be a smartass."
Sure, robots don't have "fear". They will however have plenty of systems for self preservation. They better: I don't want them smashed to bits before they do their most damage, especially at their high cost and the high value of whatever we deploy them to fight for.
But they won't have "compassion", either. And that's not going to be replaced by some synthetic system. Fear is much easier to simulate than compassion. And compassion, even on the battlefield, is part of what sets us apart from even the other animals we've achieved superiority over.
In human soldiers, fear and compassion compete, with compassion stronger. Because compassion is stronger than fear. Again, that's part of what makes us superior to the other animals we've beaten in the competition for "top dog" on this planet.
Replacing human soldiers with robots will mean that a lot more people who aren't necessary to victory will be killed. The robots will let the humans calling the shots from the rear do even more atrocity than we do now. The disconnection between the soldier and the people in their way by automation has always escalated. Robots will bring that disconnect, and its wasteful destruction, to an extreme.
--
make install -not war
An effective battlefield robot should still have an instinct for self-preservation. It is of no use to its deployer if it is destroyed, so it should default to self preservation mode, only risking itself as needed to fulfill its mission objectives.
Isn't anybody going to produce a quote from Asimov?
disamble, baaaaddd human....
There's an easy way to stop them. What you have to realize is that all of the Army's kill-bot have a preset kill limit.
All we have to do is throw way after wave of our men at them and they'll automatically shut down.
...you have been ethically killed. Have a nice day!
Liberty uber alles.
That's the word that you are looking for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxymoron
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
How did you know I was from Iceland? ;-)
Why is it that we're unwilling to allow euthanasia, but if someone dresses an 18-year-old kid up in the wrong uniform we're completely OK with the idea of eviscerating him? The only advantage of having battalions of killing machines is that they lessen the chance that our kids/siblings/parents are the ones dying. It's great as long as we have the best technology, but if the tables are flipped and another nation gets the upper hand we stand the risk of watching millions of our kids get mowed down by Kalashnikov wielding lawnmowers.
My ethical sub-routines say its OK to kill you...
If you think human police or soldiers are bad, just wait until a whole army of robots malfunctions. Hasn't anybody read "With Folded Hands", "Fondly Fahrenheit", or any of Fred Saberhagen's Berserker novels? This is a bad bad bad bad idea.
The more sophisticated you make a robot or computer, the more its failure modes resemble organic dysfunction -- until they're indistinguishable from insanity.
Who cares if they should or should not have?
The question is about whether it is ethical to kill an innocent child who accidentally wanders into the kill zone.
Yes it is. Because no one has claimed that such an event would be "ethical". That would be termed an "accident". The same if ANYONE accidentally wandered into freeway traffic.
The major difference being that freeway traffic is more about getting from point A to point B and NOT about killing people on the freeway.
"A war with no civility will only give rise to massacres." - Treize Khushrenada
They turn off after they have killed their quota of humans. It is a trivial matter of sending wave after wave of men at them.
You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them, until they reached their limit and shutdown
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Yeah, except that if a machine can be program to follow certain battlefield rules, it can also be programmed to neglect those exact same rules.
Duh.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
Soldiers are supposed to want to fight. If you want the Peace Corps, send in the Peace Corps. If you want the Marine Corps, send in the Marine Corps.
Please, tell it to the "Righties" that have placed the U.S. troops in a hostile foreign country to act as police officers. Don't whine at us about it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intraocular_lens
"Are they made from real Girl Scouts?" ~Wednesday Addams
What if it said "Vaya con Dios" in a deep, stern male voice just before it killed a villain? That would be pretty Righteous.
See subject. Thank you.
those 17% that think all civilians are insurgents, are right. A civilian is just an insurgent that has not given you cause to kill him yet, in the scenario we have in Iraq. And most causalities are not from our troops shooting civies, its from people blowing themselves up in markets and killing civies.
So how do you reconcile the ethics of assuming every human is not hostile to the tactical reasoning of one of those innocents suddenly pulling out a gun and toasting you. I'm actually more surprised that it was such a small percentage of soldiers who responded that civilians should be treated like insurgents. Until you're sure of their intent, basic tactical reasoning says to assume hostility (not respond with hostility, but still assume it). Seems like a trick question to me. It's also an interesting dilemma of how you would program a robot to not do that and yet still respond to threats. New strategy! Walk up to the robot very calmly and plant a grenade on it's rear. I guarantee you wouldn't get to do that with a human soldier.
If these things are to have great powers then we need to have great trust in them. If it is closed source then how do we know what they will do ?
Oh, you say: this will only be used on battle fields far away, but how long before they decide that we need a moral police force ?
OK: I from what I know of the military they will keep it highly secret ... not good prospects.
Step 1. Build Terminators Step 2. Rename the internet Skynet Step 3. Robot apocalypse Step 4. ???? Step 5. Profit!
The opposite of a dumb idea is not necessarily not dumb.
I smell sales-people have been involved.
Stephan
http://stephan.sugarmotor.org
http://videos.summer-glau.net/view/372/tscc-2x07-12/
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
I would rather face a robotic soldier programmed to kill me than a cruise missile that's been programmed to lock onto me. They're both machines that are out to get me, but one has a range of hundreds of miles and moves at supersonic speeds. I'll take my chances with the one that can be foiled by, you know, stairs.
will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots.
And I predict it will go nowhere. The military has never liked truly autonomous machines. It goes against too many hot buttons in their value system, and it's easy to shut down. (The first friendly fire episode with fighting robots is highly likely to be the last.)
What I predict will go somewhere is the infantry version (or the tank version) of the Predator drone - NCO's in trailers will fight wars by remote control on the ground, just as they do now in the air. It will probably be made to look like a video game on the trailer end...
Killin' people since 1979... "And they think we don't do it on purpose!"
What was that pesky law again?
I think there are some pretty simple arguments against building a army of automated killing machines (ie ones without a human element deciding if / when to take a life):
1) If the US develops automated killing robots so will its enemies. In the fundamental nature of all military projects this will escalate into each side making ever more efficient killing machines. Just another MAD type situation where any eventual use will lead to the automated destruction of the human race.
2) The human cost to war plays a large part in deterring war and prolonging peace. We measure the cost of war in lives lost not dollars spent. An automated army removes this deterrent. Who really thinks reducing war to a budget item will lead to less death and destruction?
From the article:
His report drew on a 2006 survey by the surgeon general of the Army, which found that fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents. More than one-third said torture was acceptable under some conditions, and fewer than half said they would report a colleague for unethical battlefield behavior.
If you look at the actual study PDF, though, it seems that the New York Times took some liberties in their paraphrasing. Here's the actual questions:
article: "fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect"
study: "all non-combatants should be treated with dignity and respect"
article: "all civilians should be treated as insurgents"
study: "all non-combatants should be treated as insurgents" (not sure about this one, but my guess is that the minority who answered positive on this one were thinking along the lines of being on guard at all times, just in case someone who seems innocent is actually planning on harming you)
article: "More than one-third said torture was acceptable under some conditions"
study: "torture should be allowed if it will save the life of a soldier/marine" and "torture should be allowed in order to gather important information about insurgents"
By your logic it would still be termed an accident if the kid wandered on to the battlefield and was killed by a robot, because the intent of the person who designed the robot was to not kill innocents.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
Why would anybody "make a mistake"?
Who cares if they should or should not have?
The blame lies with the parents, not the person setting up the kill zone.
The question is about whether it is ethical to kill an innocent child who accidentally wanders into the kill zone.
That's not an accident.
Yes it is. Because no one has claimed that such an event would be "ethical".
I consider freeways, and keeping children off of them, to be pretty ethical behavior.
That would be termed an "accident". The same if ANYONE accidentally wandered into freeway traffic.
No one accidentally wanders into freeway traffic. Either their wardens were faulty, or they ignored the signs on purpose.
The major difference being that freeway traffic is more about getting from point A to point B and NOT about killing people on the freeway.
And the purpose of the field of fire is to prevent people from getting from point A to point B, and everybody knows it.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Of course Colonels and Generals don't want robotic combatants. They wouldn't be able to sit behind their desk and periodically come out to decorate a fallen soldier that way, and they might actually have to do more than fall back on patriotism as a rallying cry for more wars.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
So, ...is Number 5 *really* alive??
I sense someone hasnt gotten over the loss of the election yet. The right wingers are so bitter,
but they just have to accept the fact theirs is a failed ideology.
You precious right kills anyone they damn well feel like. Easily more deaths occour due to the actions of right wingers, funnily enough mainly Israelies and Americans, who kill whenever they feel like it. Perhaps thats why they are targeted?
No wonder your a coward who is scared to post logged in!
Wasn't the same true of tanks when they were first proposed in WW1? If I remember correctly the commanders had so little belief in them that the troops who were meant to be following behind were kept so far back that the enemy lines closed up behind the tanks after they had successfully broken through.
Not that I think killer robots are a good idea, more that every time a new technology is proposed some people always say it is pointless, and others can't believe the world existed before it, and that only time will show which group is correct.
robots can't think creatively. some of the best ways to fight is via jujitsu: rerouting the enemies own attacks/ strengths against itself. give me a pack of desperate determined poor guys in the middle of a desert and a pack of mean lean advanced killing robot machines, and my money is on the poor guys in the middle of a desert, any time
you win wars with intelligence and creativity and determination. not with force
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I'm a personality prototype. You can tell can't you?
To be ethical, it's not sufficient to not do evil. You have to do good as well.
Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents
I cannot fathom how could anybody think that the conclusion to draw from this report is to develop AI to take ethical decisions. I dare say that no one who knows anything about AI research would hazard a guess about when such an elaborate project could come to fruition. What is needed is some sensitivity training for soldiers sent overseas... What do the people who answered this survey think would happen to their wives and daughters if an invading army came in the US with the same ideas about the dignity and respect of noncombatants?
Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."
Typical. The answer, for some, to the problem of our soldiers reacting "badly" to a bloody mess isn't "Lets get into bloody messes less!" but is instead "Lets come up with an idea that'll cost untold (literally) millions of dollars to get out of the research phase."
5 PM rolled around and the pot-smoking losers arrived and started flaming.
MOD PARENT UP, +5 DAMN RIGHT!
My killbots feature Lotus Notes with DB2 databases instead of NSFs, running on Vista... AND they're on a WiMAX mesh-connected Windows 2008 Active Directory network!
-Dr. Evil
They can be built without anger or recklessness...
without anger or recklessness? Technology really seems to have no limits!
wars, what is the expected outcome? Given any purported defense, threat or desired conquest, what would stop deployment. We have trouble with control now.
The imposition of one's will over others or the destruction of their lives in any form without the possibility of cost to one's own life is not something I am comfortable with, given history as a guide.
Military operation and, the other shoe, civilian law enforcement should not be given costless and automated imposition, until we become more tolerant, fair, accurate and less dominating. (At which time the necessity will be less?)
"fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect"
and 100% of all robots will treat them with no dignity or respect.
Every time someone invents something that is going to end all wars, it just backfires. Imagine an army of robots that have no fear. Bolo.... Berzerker....
I had a bunch of conversations leading up to the election, I've had a bunch of conversations with religious folks, I've talked to people about all kinds of things. Getting people to understand something that conflicts with what they've already decided is very, very difficult. We don't tend to absorb information that suggests that we're wrong, period.
Soldiers are just an executive arm of foreign policy. If you replace them with more logical machines, that's great, but it would be far more effective to replace the people actually making the big decisions.
Of course, this sounds funny, but it is serious. If you assume that robots can make more logical decisions than humans can, why let a human make any important decision, ever?
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Uh, yes, that is what logically follows. If there's an obvious 'kill-zone' and you let your children anywhere near it without some form of restraint... well, let me rephrase this slightly: if there's an obvious {zone of danger} and you let your children anywhere near this zone without some sensible form of restraint (here's a good form of restraint: don't bloody go there you ninny).
Replace the {zone of danger} with anything you like - giant chasm, electrical transformer, soldier going on a PTSD rampage, other form of serial killing, warzone, bomb test site, massive fire, colony of starved cannibals, nuclear fallout site, Barney the Dinosaur's house - and you shouldn't be surprised if your child falls down a cliff, gets electrocuted, stabbed, shot, caught in crossfire, bombed, burned to death, eaten alive, develops cancer or gets molested.
While it may not always be an 'accident' as such, it's hardly the zone's fault. It didn't go, "Bwahaha I WILL TAKE THIS CHILD" it just so happened that something was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Except in the Barney's House case; that one is genuinely malicious. I hate that goddamn dinosaur.
where is the whatcouldpossiblygowrong tag ? It is a personal favorite..
music lover since 1969
A while ago, I posted a little essay called "Why the Gun is Civilization". It was pretty well received, and got me a lot of positive comments from a variety of people. Some folks asked for permission to reprint and publish the essay in various newsletters and webzines, and I gladly granted it every time, only asking for attribution in return. Recently, I have noticed my essay pop up on the Internet a lot in various forums, most of which I do not frequent. This in itself causes me no grief, but the reposts are almost invariably attributed to someone who is not me. Some are attributed to a Major L.Caudill, USMC (Ret.), and some are merely marked as "forwarded" by the same person. Others are not attributed at all, giving the impression that the person who posted the essay is also its author. In school, we call reproduction without attribution "plagiarism". It's usually cause for a failing grade or even expulsion in most college codes of conduct. In the publishing world, we call the same thing "intellectual property theft". Now, my little blog scribblings are hardly published works in the traditional sense, nor do I incur any financial damage from this unattributed copying, but it's still a matter of honor. I did, after all, sit down and type up that little essay. It may not make it into any print anthologies, but it's mine, and seeing it with someone else's name on the byline is a little annoying. Call it ego, call it vanity, but there it is. In the end, I guess I should probably shrug it off and tell myself that I can produce something that's worth stealing.
Why are you trying to phrase it as "blame" now?
Again, freeways are about getting from point A to point B. Not about killing anyone who steps onto them.
Setting something to kill anyone who approaches would seem to be the opposite of an ethical action if an ethical action would be keeping people away from such.
A child can wander into traffic without intent to do so.
No. The purpose is to kill. Not to prevent. There's a difference. A safe can prevent people from getting from point A to point B (point B being inside the safe) without killing anyone.
The fact that you have to make so many false claims should be enough to tell you that you are wrong.
Machines cannot be ethical because they cannot choose between a more ethical and less ethical course of action.
Maybe this is a side-issue (but then, maybe it isn't), but this usage of the word "accident" drives people like me crazy... if you spend any time thinking about pedestrian rights or bicycle advocacy, the way people accept and shrug off deaths inflicted by automobiles as mere, unplanned "accidents" seems pretty evil.
This year, just like every year, we can expect around 50,000 people to die in automobile "accidents" in the United States. There's nothing surprising or unavoidable about this. It happens because we design and build the places we live in a certain way; we've made public policy decisions that have that number of deaths built-in as an unspoken price tag (and we're not even talking about air pollution or oil wars yet). If we wanted to reduce or eliminate these deaths, it would be pretty obvious what to do about.
And yet, we shrug off all responsibility for them: Accidents will happen.
Will someone else do it first?
Whatever about morality and ethics. Morality never motivates weapons design. If some other country builds an army of killer robots, we'll build one too.
There are several issues that never seem to get addressed when it comes to robotic soldiers.
Firstly, when an autonomous unit makes a 'mistake', who is held accountable? The actual unit, the program running the unit, the programmer, the entity in control of the unit (state actor, military outfit, etc.)?
Second, what exactly constitutes ethical action? To really understand this we would have to start analyzing code and run simulations to see if that code actually responded to external environments in a manner we would truly deem ethical. And, in that scenario, who would deem the responses of a robotic killer ethical or appropriate? An ethics group? More likely a military outfit.
Lastly (for this venue), would an autonomous combatant every truly be autonomous? Pragmatism would necessitate override controls configured in each unit. It follows that entities in control of these units could override any action they saw fit to override. Ethical or non.
Current Perspectives
http://jacqueslaroche.blogspot.com/2008/04/from-mechanization-to-roboticization.html
-jacques laroche
It's quite predictable that human beings get emotional, neurotic, indescriminate, and particularly viscious when large groups begin the business of killing one another. The hostilities often last hundreds or thousands of years. The brutality get's nothing less than crazy, and what's predictable is that wholesale badness frequently ensues.
Building a machine to kill more ethically is completely oxymoronic. Build a machine instead that makes it virtually impossible for others to kill "Us". Leaves them (the folks on the other side of the issue) whole, intact, and uninjured. Able to learn the follie of their ways, and that attempts on inflicting death and suffering on others is a bankrupt endeavor. Show them a better way. Demonstrate compassion, dignity, and being humane. Give them "Civilized Alternatives" to address their issues.
Until you begin to deeply respect human life, you have no ethical ground from which to meaningfully advance human life. That doesn't mean become a speed-bump on the highway to escalating violence. It does mean that we can look for ways to manage, and mitigate the damage that fearful, angry, or violent people can perpetrate. We don't stop killing people because it's good for them. We stop killing people because it's bad for us.
Something that can't be unethical or ethical is probably going to be more ethical than something that is unethical. In other words, if robots are neutral and humans are either evil or good, neutral is more good than evil.
You just said it can't be ethical, so how can it be more ethical? You consider neutral to be a one dimensional midpoint on a line between good and evil... half a glass of water, so to speak. This is a false dilemma.
Logically speaking, neutral is neither good nor evil so it cannot be more good than evil. Good, Evil, and Neutral are three tips on an equilateral triangle. Neutral is no closer to good than evil. They represent three logical extremes.
Kissinger's head; "Please gentlemen. We must put an end to the bloodshed. We've all seen too many body bags and ball sacks."
Sig this!
"17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents"
I think a statement like this (or a response of "yes" to a question with that wording) needs a little more digging
I wonder if for soldiers this is anything like a security-minded person saying
"every unencrypted computer communication should be assumed to be compromised"
of course they're not, but it's a good working principle
do these soldiers really mean that that they work on the assumption that any civilian could potentially be an insurgent? I can't see a problem with that
could go wrong?
As far as I know, my computers have never accepted a bribe
Because, well, only humans require these forms of compensation.
A machine can simply be hacked into. Given the current general trends in computer security, these "Ethical Killing Machines" robots can bring a whole new meaning to "Bot-Net".
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
As Commander Data would say, what makes a soldier angry? What makes him want revenge? And what makes her want rampage?
Hey guys, don't worry, I read more books than you and I came up with a "solution"!!11!! Let's make an army of ethical aimbots that only kills when it's necessary.
stfu. Solutions in engagement. lolbbq.
...otherwise it becomes easy to conduct.
Autonomous robot killing machines only make it easier to kill people without the guilt of murder, not fight wars.
The idea of a robot fighting wars are in control, if the person controlling them are not psycho heads like HITLER.
I see... land mines, nuclear missiles, a variety of air strike abilities including cruise missiles, the floating nuclear reactors and their strike power... not enough. They need to eliminate those black privates from the battle field so that their mums don't protest. What year are we going to learn the lesson! American Military Machine has pushed the country to the point of bankruptcy. That's not enough for them they need to make war doable and efficient. Increase the cost of hardware and line their own pockets. What OS are they going to run? Windows? Or something more 'friendly' a Mac OS. I think maybe a Mac OS and if they malfunction and a bomb comes up on the screen, they can then explode. You can't develop or manufacture weapons without the participation of people. If you put all the resources spent internationally into a creative field we would be living in heaven on Earth. The cost of war is never calculated to include the opportunities lost. http://www.nationalpriorities.org/costofwar_home The War in Iraq Costs $574,500,000,000 and counting. At a guess since WW2 we must be talking $20,000,000,000,000 or some other totally stupid number. This is an investment with a nil return. The same cash put into something that generated a true return wouldn't be lost to the system but expand our wealth on Earth. American's might have free heath care. Australia might have retained its leading scientists, education would be free to every nation, fusion reactors deployed... What has been lost is truly unknown we can only say that it is greater than a totally stupid number X compound interest. IE we have lost the opportunity for heaven on Earth for generations to come. How ###### up is that! VERY x POWER OF A TOTALLY STUPID NUMBER ###### UP! Yani
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HzVBVIjM6s&feature=related
In GOD we trust, all others we monitor.
I see: so the problem in Iraq is with those grunts on the ground, not with the people who trained them, and certainly not with those geniuses who got us in there in the first place.
To me this sounds a lot like the way certain Christians argue that being filthy rich is Gods reward to you for being such a good little person - despite what Jesus had to say about the subject.
So it is "ethical" to make a killing automaton, is it? Just like waterboarding isn't torture, it's just "being persuasive". The real rationale behind this is not that it is "ethical", but that it is politically less costly at home to send a battalion of machines out than it is to see your young sons and daughters come home as stiffs.
I have a better suggestion: Send all these "brilliant military thinkers" out on the battlefields in Afghanistan dressed up as Uncle Sam and carrying banners saying "We hate muslims". That would be much more ethical, because if they got killed we could say "Look, no blood on my hands, it was the others that did it, you know what they are like". In my opinion, if you have the taste for war, you've got to have the guts to go out there, take the risks and do the killing yourself; otherwise you are little better than a coward hiding behind others.
Anything else is unethical.
The United States military has a term for soldiers trained not to think: "Corpses".
"Freedom Through Vigilance"
It's difficult to imagine a robot capable of dealing with the complexity of the battlefield without running into the same cognitive traps that humans do. The OP quotes a bit about 'scenario fulfillment', namely the tendency to absorb new information more easily if it confirms the scenario you have in mind; conversely, the more important information, that which contradicts your preconceived notions, is ignored or absorbed more slowly. A fast changing, complex situation like a battle will favor those who don't get bogged down in second guessing themselves. If it's a robot churning through decision trees, it'll be just as useless as a human soldier who insists on second guessing every bullet.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
The researchers claim that these real-life terminators 'can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear.
So does that mean they will not avoid RPG's, bullets, and driving off of rooftops? A robot that doesn't care about being destroyed will be easily destroyed.
And we know that we still haven't got it all figured out yet. But you think you can write an algorithm to figure it out?
I was blocking a highway in Baghdad, waiting for the bomb squad to dispose of this bomb on the highway, and we were preventing anyone from getting close to it. It takes the bomb squad forever, and it gets dark. A vehicle drives straight at us, at maybe 90 miles per hour on the highway. That is exactly what suicide car bombs do, which is the biggest danger to American personnel. You have to shoot the driver, or they will ram you and 95% chance you and everyone around you will die.
Having about two seconds to either stop the vehicle, shoot the driver, or die, I had my buddy turn on the lights. The driver slammed on the breaks, skid to a stop maybe 200 meters from us, and threw it in reverse and got the hell out of there.
I knew he just saw a wide open highway, and wanted to see how fast he could go. At that speed, he couldn't have seen us in the twilight. The algorithm would have said to shoot him. He's alive because I'm a human.
http://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
Imagine a world where a rich powerful country can just send in the robots. It they could make war without any of their own body bags coming back, what would hold them back ? Iraq is in the headlines on a daily basis as US soldiers die. If it was only US robots being destroyed, while "natives", or "insurgents" were killed, what would press the administration to resolve the war. What I am raising is the issue of making the horrors of war one sided. If you have a peace force of robots, fine. But what about when a rich country has less noble motives. With no body bags coming home, what is to stop that country ?
http://davesboat.blogspot.com/
What if this ethical robot/computer decides that "War is Hell" and decides not to fight?
Or, given that generally wars are not started by people who are ethical, what if it decides to changes sides and fight for what is right?
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
I haven't read all the comments, but...does anybody except me see a paradox in "ethical killing machine"?
What the hell have opinions of soldiers to do with this? When policy is translated into the indoctrination that it's better to kill 50 random 'other' people than to run the risk that one of your own people might be harmed then there is no respect. And the article serves the myth that problems are caused by soldiers not adhering to army policies.
Intelligent robots could shift the balance indeed, because you can sacrifice them more easily and it's even good business to do so. But on the other hand killing by remote is easier than in real life(well, for most) and it also becomes easier to keep people at home completely oblivious of what's happening in the war.
So there will be interest. Good business, more control over information, and less killed in your own camp. That sums up the morality.
/dev/machinegun2 has been mounted 20 times without anyone being killed, kill forced.
I am the lawn!
If you believe the incrowd, then MURDER DEATH KILL robots with fuzzy little Disney stickers on them should run on punch cards and they'll be completely safe. Because paper makes voting safe.
Was this a joke or did it go too 6iron
My phone is beeping all of a sudden.
/.is against patents.
A bunch of robots go out into "battle". They encounter the enemy, and fluently in the local dialect, they suggest beer or coffee and spend a few hours with the "bad guys" talking about how much their bosses suck.
Then the robots forge some backdated birth certificates for the "enemy", generate some CGI of a glorious bloody battle for Reuters, splatter each other with ground beef and have the guys on the other side begin submitting missing person and death certificates.
The "destroyed" robots disarm and sell themselves to the enemy to aid in education, manufacturing and construction. The resultant income is used to pay for the ground beef, and for local actors to beg for their lives while faking torture in fake prison sets.
Human "allies" who accompany the robots and threaten to betray the secret mission are all mysteriously captured and are forced to work as custodians, cooks and maintenance workers in the new schools.
Much better outcome.
God help us when the Second Variety is developed...
Too late for this comment to be noticed, but here goes.
Look, we will not have the artificial intelligence software capable of running autonomous robot warfighters for a very long time. I suspect "we" will never have it : the day we develop AI this smart, the AI will be smart enough to take control of such bots away from us. (this does not necessarily mean doom and gloom, it is just reality. We have no hope of controlling beings who are effectively 10 million times smarter than us)
But, we WILL have TELEPRESENCE. Every "infantry replacement" robot would be directly controlled by a operator located elsewhere, using controllers (with force feedback) similar to those used by existing bots like the Da Vinci surgical robot. The robots will be able to walk, run, and kick down doors (using a door-kicking attachment, of course, not with a foot).
They'll be able to go into buildings, searching every room for the enemy fighters. Since the operator does not fear for his life, the robots could employ less lethal weapons, such as concussion grenades and taser shotguns, in most circumstances. It would usually not be necessary to kill enemy soldiers. The same goes with "shooting them in the leg" - the reason soldiers do not do this today is because doing so gives the enemy fighter a chance to kill you. If your life is not at risk, you can try to capture your enemy alive, even if you lose a bot.
I think each robot would cost about $100,000 to manufacture in mass quantities. This is cheaper to replace than a human soldier. (because training and life insurance costs the U.S. Army more)
Also, a destroyed robot could simply be cannibalized for spare parts. Thus, unless the enemy actually melted one of your robots to slag, you could probably get some of those expensive parts back when they "killed" one, once you recover it. Robots could have integrated claymore mines or teargas cannisters that the operator would detonate if someone managed to "blind" a robot by jumping it from behind or putting a sheet on it, ect.
One time pad encryption would be used to protect the communications link between each robot and the control station. It would be impossible to hack without gaining physical access to either the circuitry in the robot or the control station consoles. Thus, there would be no way for the enemy to suborn a large number of these robots.
Wireless mesh networking, with nodes in every bot of a robot army would allow for the high bandwidth video links needed to control the bots.
We could use the robots to kill terrorist leaders while risking no troop presence. The reason we did not kill/capture Osama Bin Laden during the Clinton era when we knew his location was because it would have taken a supply chain of hundreds of aircraft to support even a small special forces squad in hostile territory.
Robots could be deployed using missiles or other cheap and fast methods that human soldiers cannot tolerate. Upon landing, like a REAL smart bomb, they would search the nearby buildings for the target, controlled by a human operator.
As the somewhat trollish parent is modded insightful, allow me to deconstruct the article presented in it a bit.
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either convincing me via argument, or make me do your bidding under threat of force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without exception. Reason or force, that's it.
Great, so we start with a little black-and-white to make the arguments that follow as clear-cut as the first paragraph, and possibly put the argumentors of a more toned thinking at slight disadvantage.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction, and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
Now we introduce generally accepted nice concepts "moral", "civilized" and non-violence, and link those to the obvious method of achieving them, the "personal firearm". This lays a nice "straw man" trap for people directly opposing, as they are seemingly also opposing the aforementioned concepts.
Also note that "some" may find this paradoxical, hinting that "most" see this inherent logic. Great, now some arguments!
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force.
If you carry a gun, I should incapacitate you as soon as possible to prevent you from using that gun, right? So instead of "give me your money", I first hit you from behind and then state my request.
You have to use reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or employment of force.
How many arguments will become more "civil", as stated before, once the other party shows that he/she is carrying a gun? Isn't it actually reversing the balance of force, not negating it?
It may be true that if everyone were carrying guns, some crimes might be prevented as the physically strong would have less advantage over the weak. However, armed confrontations don't usually end up in balanced argumentation, so I sincerely doubt that there might be downsides in such state of matters, and they could even outweigh the advantages.
The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal footing with a 19-year old gang banger, and a single guy on equal footing with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats.
Use of gun requires certain physical attributes such as aiming, reflexes and visual acuity, which will still remain unequal. Also, the ones who initially were armed with baseball bats are now armed with guns, and are more likely to use them, which still puts numbers and intent on advantage, not the "self-protection". If the unwillingness of gun use would be eliminated in whole population, I'd say we'd soon have more problems created than rape attempts solved.
The gun removes the disparity in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
On the other hand we argument that everyone should carry a piece, and then we prove its usefulness by stating it's superior to several guys with baseball bats. For a level field, the argument should assume that the guys, too, have guns. The only weapon levelling the field here would be few kilograms of C4.
I see that guns transform the equation of "you're the only one likely to die" to "the other person is as likely to die, too". But this essentially only raises the stakes, much like nuclear weapons do to traditional warfare.
People who argue for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and the many, and that's the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even an armed one, can only make
http://codeandlife.com
Guns are dispassionate. Dynamite and bombs are even more dispassionate. Nuclear bombs are dispassionate. Red Buttons are dispassionate. Gas chambers are dispassionate.
Humanity does not exactly have a good track record of making the world a better place by not having the soldiers gouge out their eyes manually.
Given that history, robot armies don't sound like an idea ultimately leading to a reduction of atrocities.
Robots in the battlefield that can make certain decisions means AI. And AI does not exist yet. How are they going to achieve such a thing? It's not as simple as make a ruleset saying 'if this happens, do this, if that happens, do that'.
Still, the point stands. Less guns in general in a society means less people getting shot.
I see your point, and raise you two...
Less alcohol in general in a society means less people getting drunk and killing innocent people.
DUI numbers make gun statistics look like a preschool daycare play.
Let me know when you want to tackle removing something with a REAL impact on society. In the meantime, I'll continue protecting my freedom and family responsibly, thank you very much.
Hadn't heard of the tank thing, but the general pattern sounds about right. In this case, though, I think they have a point. It's simply too easy to figure out a way to disable a robot or use its own behaviors against it. Then what, patch Tuesdays?
since no one has seemingly bothered yet... "It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop..."
you really expect me to be able to express my opinion of what's so fucked up in this world in 120 characters or less?
"Please put down your weapon. You have 20 seconds to comply. "
returning to base...
How about we develop autonomous politician robots that behave more ethically than humans, thereby cutting out a major impetus for wars in the first place?
...and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents.
I want to know what was the context in which this was asked. Everyone that has handled a firearm has heard that he/she should treat every gun as if it is loaded, even if it isn't. It is an idea to add safety. It doesn't mean a gun without ammunition will fire. However, if a gun is believed to be clear of all ammunition and it is not, one does not have to worry about causing damage or injury. Similarly soldiers are in an area in which the enemy dresses the same as civilians that are not taking part in the battle. This means, to avoid surprise attack, one must consider that the innocent looking civilian across the street is not so innocent and is preparing to ambush our soldiers. Am I saying all civilians should be fought and shot, as if they were insurgents in a battle? No. I am saying that soldiers treating civilians with the same concept of suspicion and reserve while they are on patrol is not unreasonable to protect their lives. Depending on the context of the question and the situations to which the question is referring, answers can be different when being asked how civilians should be handled.
developing robots designed to fight human wars with human rulesets. if "war rules" have never really worked, human war has resulted in only loss on all sides, and if indeed war is a last resort, shouldnt we employ robots for the task of defeating the potential for war? this would by far be the most ethical employment of a "war" robot.
and now, the trollmod ensues...
thank goodness a room full of stuffy old men who all received deferments from actual battle and cling to an unrealistic definition of patriotism fueled by xenophobic speculation and lack of insight can help us determine how we should best use a technology that has been explained to them only through the rose lenses of hollywood spectacles such as the terminator. an ethical war robot for peace makes about as much sense as a gentle-natured can opener for sealing cans.
end soapbox.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Maybe it's smarter to just stop electing corrupt and warmongering Republicans than it is to create a robot army which will somehow make their illegal wars more "humane".
"For our policemen, we created a race of robots. Their function is to patrol the planets -- in space ships like this one -- and preserve the peace. In matters of aggression we have given them absolute power over us.
At the first sign of violence they act automatically against the aggressor. And the penalty for provoking their action is too terrible to risk.
The result is that we live in peace, without arms or armies, secure in the knowledge that we are free from aggression and war -- free to pursue more profitable enterprises. We do not pretend to have achieved perfection -- but we do have a system -- and it works."
Klaatu, The Day the Earth Stood Still
- - - -
The real Tetsujin 28 is a giant robot.
The US without a doubt has attacked civilian on purpose, but so has every other country INCLUDING the supposed victim in your own example who bombed entirely undefended cities, slaughtered million of civilians and forced childeren into sexual slavery.
If you said "countries" instead of US, your argument would hold a lot more water. Now it just seems that you want to bash a certain country that just happened to have the biggest bomb in a war of city bombing.
If you know a bit about the japanese in WW2 you know they do NOT make good victims. A country that threathed everyone not of that country as lesser beings, does NOT get my sympathy if they after a dirty war just happened to be hit harder then they managed to do. If you punch Mike Tyson in the guts don't expect me to cry when he beats you into a pulp afterwards.
So why don't you mention the city bombings STARTED by the japanese against entirely undefended cities?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
but think of Battle Star Galactica's Cylons
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The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility.
- John Arbuthnot "Jackie" Fisher
"Killing the enemy's courage is as vital as killing his troops"
- Carl von Clausewitz
Soldiers shouldn't be policing. They should be wreaking havoc and crushing enemies. *Police* should do the policing. Make police-bots, make robocops, send in floating laser-droids...
But if it's not a battlefield, leave soldiers out of it. And if it is, let them have their way.
- This is one of mine
---- I was woken up this morning by a face full of fur. Damn cat thought my head made a good pillow.
Morals are society's position on what's right and wrong, ethics, that's your, the individual's internal
compass to what's right and wrong. Ethics and morals obviously conflict.
So since computers don't have any capacity for compassion and fairness, both which are dimensions
in any coordinate system within which to plot out right and wrong, how can they develop ethics?
None of the Abu Ghraib would've happened, had the guards been robots. Even if you think, the higher-ups hinted to them, to be harsh on the prisoners — well, that wouldn't have worked on the robots, who need explicit orders...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
You're insane.
Watch as the builders' bosses fail to take the hint and decide that the solution is to build bigger, more dangerous killbots...
LOL.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
The article talks about a robot plane deciding not to bomb a tank because there are civilians nearby. As soon as the enemy learns about that rule, there will be children chained to the top of every tank, and civilians forced to march along with every soldier. "Ethical" warfare isn't possible. War is a death struggle between two monsters made of people. If you won't be a monster, you lose. Hence, Hiroshima, and Manheim, and Tokyo, and the entire USSR during the cold war, and... If the objective of the war is not important enough to kill for, stay home.
overlord@KillerBot:~$ uname -a
Linux KillerBot 2.6.24.5-smp #2 SMP Wed Apr 30 13:41:38 CDT 2008 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 5000+ AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
overlord@KillerBot:~$