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."

Comments

Contradiction in terms

[willrj.marshall]

I think we have a contradiction in terms, here.

Not fair!

[Abreu]

Hey! I just submitted the same story this morning!

http://slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=1763885

Re:Humane wars

[MadCow42]

>> The next obvious step is to do away with the machines entirely and just get a chessboard.

"Want To Play A Game?" :)

Don't forget the most important feature:

[Gat0r30y]

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.

Re:Do they run vista?

[Anonymous Coward]

"On a smaller level, societies where people own guns are usually more peaceful ones."

Umm, Iraq circa 2005-2007 and Afghanistan over the past few decades seem to be obvious counterexamples.