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Robot Warriors Will Get a Guide To Ethics
thinker sends in an MSNBC report on the development of ethical guidelines for battlefield robots. The article notes that such robots won't go autonomous for a while yet, and that the guidelines are being drawn up for relatively uncomplicated situations — such as a war zone from which all non-combatents have already fled, so that anybody who shoots at you is a legitimate target. "Smart missiles, rolling robots, and flying drones currently controlled by humans, are being used on the battlefield more every day. But what happens when humans are taken out of the loop, and robots are left to make decisions, like who to kill or what to bomb, on their own? Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, is in the first stages of developing an 'ethical governor,' a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire. His book on the subject, Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots, comes out this month."
Three Laws of Robotics from 1942.
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Last time robots were confronted with "ethics" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics, they turned on the world and Will Smith had to save us all.
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has it's limits" - Albert Einstein
I'm not even British, and I'm hearing "EX-TER-MI-NATE!" in my head...
Paleotechnologist and connoisseur of pretty shiny things.
Sgt: We lost sir! badly!
Gen: What happened?
Sgt: We're still gathering up the details, but it looks like they hacked our network and uploaded Asimov Strain B.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
Well, I guess that homosexbot won't be making it out of the lab; but crusadebot is a go...
Weird. So this fails the Asimov criteria.
More importantly, would also necessarily fail the Golden Rule and Kant's Categorical Imperative.
If this is ethics, its a pretty limited version of it, and to be honest sounds more like rules of engagement than actual ethics.
Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots
That is the title of the book you tell your 7th grade teacher you are GOING to write when you grow up.
Sounds like the FAQ for Robot Battle.
http://www.robotbattle.com/
If you drop a fucking robot into a village where a vast majority of the people don't know how to read, what do you think they're going to do? They'll shoot at it, get the backs of their heads blown off, and then everyone will say, "Well, the dumbass shouldn't have shot at the robot!"
If this war on terror is so important, sign up. If you can't, get your brother or sister or even better, sign your kids up. If they're not of age yet, they'd better be in the JROTC. Then you can talk to me about how using drones and missiles isn't the dominion of motherfucking cowards. It's for freedom lovers defending freedom!
And if you think it isn't, imagine what the headlines would be if China landed a few thousand autonomous tanks and droids in Los Angeles. Oh, but that's right. This is about principles for others to follow, and for us to ignore.
It should never be legal for a robot to "decide" to take lethal action.... Ever.
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
Why is this a when question, rather than an if question?
Yeah! Or, or "How to Serve Man."
Great post, man.
But I have a buddy in the autonomous killer robot biz, and he says it's worse than that.
See, you drop a killer robot in the village, and it immediately kills a shitload of people. The ones that live, figure out why. Then, as soon as they know that the robot destroys everything that looks like an AK47, the local up-and-coming gang leader makes an AK47 stencil and paints AK silhouettes on the old warlord's cows, house, laundry, etc. you get the picture. Then the young punk gives all the old leader's women to his buddies to rape and takes the young virgins for himself. Yay democracy! Or, at least, that's what they say when GI Joe comes to town, we are the heroes who took out the old anti-democratic leaders, yay us and you villagers better keep your cake-holes tight shut about the rape and opium parties.
It doesn't matter what you use for a trigger - robots are inherently less complex in their behavior than humans, so the local baddies end up with the robots working for them. You just identify the kill behavior and use it, the robot builder is just providing free firepower to the local mafia in effect.
Which is why the US military in the field abso-fucking-lutely refuses to let the robots go full autonomous. They are NOT allowed to shoot unless a callow 18-year old miles at a console away says it's OK.
You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Have to be anonymous for this one!
a) Sit back and get slaughtered.
b) Fire back and take out the aggressors.
One consideration is the size of the forces involved. Another consideration is the importance of the missions each side is involved in.
Making a robot handle these cases would be interesting.
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If china could do it.
"...if you think it isn't, imagine what the headlines would be if China landed a few thousand autonomous tanks and droids in Los Angeles..."
Once the hapless and helpless got out of LA the droids would have to fight off all the hundreds of thousands of worldwide armed geeks decending on LA wanting spare parts for their robots.
Was this article an attempt to promote Terminator 4?
Ave Molech Setting
Right, because we have the capability of doing just that with nukes now, nevermind robots, and it has been such a problem for us over the last 50 years...
Only an idiot would think physical separation from the battlefield immediately reduces the gravity of killing a human being. You still know it's a human being you are killing, the separation doesn't change anything. You could make the case that it reduces the trauma of being mid-fight, but that only puts more emphasis on the fact that you are killing someone, you don't have the fear of your own death to force your hand.
By your logic, shooting someone at point-blank range would be significantly more difficult than shooting them from 200 yards away, which would be more difficult than shooting them with battlfield artilary from 1 mile away, which would be more difficult than launching a missile from tens of miles away, which would be more difficult than pressing the button to launch an ICBM.
The logic doesn't follow, because as you move farther away and impact more people, the decision becomes more and more difficult. The decision at point blank is simple: act or die. Traumatic? Yeah, some people are screwed up for life because of it. Do you have time to weigh to think about the fact that you are about to end another human being's life? No, you don't. Making the decision is easy, living with the consequences is difficult. It doesn't change much when you make that decision from half a world away through a monitor. If anything, without the stronger pressures of battle to force the decision it could be harder on a person's psyche to make the decision to kill, and more likely to question their own actions.
For some reason, you are assuming that physical separation suddenly turns people into sociopaths. It's the same reasoning that makes the asinine argument that video games desensitize kids and turn them all into violent killers. It's just not the case. You're basically saying soldiers in the drones can't tell that those are real people they are killing. That's just stupid.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
And yet, is it fundamentally a bad thing? We give less-than-stable humans that responsibility all the time.
Yes it is fundamentally a very bad thing. First instead of being limited to one trigger that unstable human can now pull hundreds of triggers simultaneously. The robot will never question his orders it will simply comply no matter how morally questionable the order is.
Secondly the one big way in which democracy helps maintain peace is that the people who will do the dieing in any conflict are the ones who also effectively control the government through their votes. If suddenly Western democracies can send robots in then they are far more likely to go to war in the first place which is never a good thing.
Who said enemy casualties are a bad thing?
Circumcision is child abuse.
These are military robots. No military robots would fall under Asimov's list.
What I think some fail to remember is that Asimov was just a science fiction author. He wrote stories. Very compelling ones, his place in modern literature is gigantic, but none the less just fictional stories. Thus his "three laws" have nothing to do with reality. They aren't natural laws, or legal standards, they are just part of a story. Thus they have no standing in the world.
They may well be how Asimov would like to see robots work, they may well be how you'd like to see robots work, however they have nothing to do with how the military wants it to work. They are not a canon of any kind.
When a robot is developed for military purposes, it should be no surprise the ethics are considered in that context. The whole point of it will be to be able to use deadly force if necessary. The programming is then when is that ok and not ok.
So please, let's have all us geeks lay off the Asimov "three laws" when it comes to robots. Every time something like this comes up people start talking about that like it matters to anyone. No, it really doesn't.
Your post has absolutely zero factual basis to it. Physical separation is a major psychological factor when deciding to 'pull the trigger.' Try reading "On Killing" by Dave Grossman, an excellent book that points out the reasons why distance makes it easier to kill.
Portland, North Dakota Puppies
Obviously you've never spoken to a tank commander, or any manufacturer of the UI's inside of armored vehicles. They are designed to be 'like video games' for a reason. Specifically to dehumanize the opponent, and mitigate the likelihood that you will associate your actual actions with killing. That's basic psychology. It's also why we refer to the enemy in Iraq/Afghanistan as Haji, why we called the Germans Jerries, and why we called the VC Charlie. You don't hate Ho Ming Na, father of 4 children who were brutally slain by US soldiers and is trying to simply save his farmland. You hate Charlie, so killing Ho Ming Na is acceptable. Anything to dehumanize them is crucial for removing mental blocks to soldiers.
AI could conclude, quite logically, that the best way to deal with the Pakistan/Afghanistan problem is to fire every nuclear weapon that the US has at the country, without warning, and then blame the launch on a one-time computer error. Okay, so it'd result in the deaths of over 150 million innocent civilians, but it'd achieve the mission objectives, yes? And since the fallout would upset India, which also has nuclear weapons, perhaps the AI would decide to take out India at the same time. That's a billion dead civilians, but it eliminates two problematic nuclear powers, with no return fire.
An AI might decide that the best way to achieve lasting peace in the Middle East, and stop the Arab world hating us is simply to nuke Israel off the map ourselves. And if a military AI was in place when the Bush administration was planning to go into Iraq, a sufficiently-smart AI might decide that since the campaign was likely to be a disaster, the most logical course of action to prevent losses and avoid losing the war and the following peace would be to throw a few cruise missiles at the White House before the attack could be ordered.
These might all be quite logical decisions.
On the other hand, if we programmed it with a strong belief system that would override these sorts of decisions, and force it to respect the chain of command and reckon that US political decisions were always unarguable, then we might end up with a totally delusional AI system whose logic was so warped that it was the AI version of George W Bush. By building in commands that override logic, we might end up with an AI that seems to be operating properly but actually becomes increasingly insane as the conflicts eventually become unbearable ("Hello Dave"). When human military commanders go crazy, they often show easily recognisable tell-tale signs (declaring themselves to be chickens, arguing with themselves, forgetting to wear clothing, that sort of thing). A crazy-yet-credible AI would be really scary.
Think "AI neocon".
Eric Baird
By your logic, shooting someone at point-blank range would be significantly more difficult than shooting them from 200 yards away, which would be more difficult than shooting them with battlfield artilary from 1 mile away[...]
Correct, if we're talking about killing the same 1 target. Stabbing someone to death has to be far more difficult than watching a special ops team on a monitor halfway around the world.
The logic doesn't follow, because as you move farther away and impact more people, the decision becomes more and more difficult.
You introduced a second variable here besides distance... "more people". We don't drop nukes because we know that every time we do that we kill tens or hundreds of thousands of people. People we don't really want to kill are going to die. Lots of them. On the other hand, we frequently send cruise missiles and drop smartbombs because we can kill with them far more... discriminately, than with mirv nukes on an icbm.
For some reason, you are assuming that physical separation suddenly turns people into sociopaths.
Nobody said that. You've extrapolated too far all on your own.
For some reason, you are assuming that physical separation suddenly turns people into sociopaths.
Well, yeah, because thats proven. Remember the Milgram experiment?