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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?
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
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!
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.
Sorry McGrew, but waterboarding and torture is both unethical and immoral. As far as I know (being an ignorant foreigner), the US Army does not include any torture instructions in its manuals.
Now, you could make a case that Gitmo's existence might be ethical but immoral, considering that it is technically not a US territory, but legally* under US jurisdiction.
*The legality of this is disputed by Cuba, of course...
No sig for the moment.
"Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster"--William Tecumseh Sherman
That is less a question of ethics and more one of stupidity.
"A claim for equality of material position can be met only by a government with totalitarian powers." Hayek
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.
Actually (according to every philosophy book i've ever read), morals are codes of conduct, and ethics are is more ethereal "right and wrong" concept. The problem is that 'ethics' has been watered down to mean 'morals' because 'business ethics', etc. roll off the tongue more easily than 'business morals'.
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.
It depends on if they are lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, or true neutral.
"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.
Arg.. Why does everybody post this shit without actually looking it up?
Once again class, this is the distinction: Ethics, the branch of philosophy that deals with what is right, what is wrong, and how to distinguish the two. There are a lot of different ethical theories out there (utilitarianism, Kantian, virtue ethics, etc.). Ethical views tend to differ between individuals, but most ethical theories (the exception being Relativism and all its branches) state that the ethical code should apply to all people in all walks of life. Example: Kant said to a.) treat all people as an end, not merely as a means, and b.) act only in a way that could be applied as a universal maxim (i.e. if its okay for me to steal, its okay for everyone to steal, all of the time).
Morals, on the other hand, are culturally based. For instance, in the Jewish and Islamic cultures, it is immoral to eat pigs. In the Christian culture, it is not. Morals are a standardized code of conduct. The major differences here are that a.) morals are culturally based, whereas ethics are universal, and b.) morals are prescribed, where ethics are up for debate.
The problem is that people get 'ethics' confused with 'applied ethics', which are actually moral codes that are to be applied certain professions (doctors, teachers, lawyers, etc.). In fact, because any breach of an applied ethics code is typically punishable by law, its more a legal code than anything else. The Hippocratic Oath could be considered a moral code, but doctor/patient confidentiality is definitely a legal code. Applied ethics are somewhere between moral and legal, depending on what you're talking about.
I realize someone somewhere probably told you the opposite was true. That person was wrong, and made you wrong. Deal with it and learn from it.
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.