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UN Debates Rules Surrounding Killer Robots
First time accepted submitter khb writes "It seems that the UN has started a debate on whether to place limits or bans on robots that can kill without manual supervision. It seems that bombs are viewed as 'kinder' than robots which might be programmed to achieve specific ends (e.g. destroy that bridge, kill anyone carrying a gun, etc.)."
it's in the rules.
That'll limit the damage they can do.
For once I agree with the UN.
I don't think it should ever get so easy as to to allow machines making the kill decision
without a human in the loop.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
10 Find Human
20 Eat It
30 GoTo 10
Table-ized A.I.
Robots should find an empty field somewhere and self-destruct after some period of time without receiving commands. We do not want to wind up with the same situation we have with land mines -- dangerous leftovers from wars that ended decades ago. Imagine an autonomous robot getting lost during a war, only to get uncovered 10 years after the war ends and going on a rampage (say, killing every armed police officer it finds)...
Palm trees and 8
So, tell me how a cruise missile that's autonomously guiding itself via GPS or TERCOM toward a target after being launched isn't already a "killer robot"?
It was commanded to launch, yes, but isn't a robot that's being commanded to head out on a mission where it could kill just being given a longer lifetime to act?
You can bring up the choices robots have to attack or not based on what target it sees, but how is this different from existing CAPTOR mines that can ignore one type of ship and go after another?
I think this Pandora's box has already been open for a long time.
Make love, not war. Where are the sex bots that will roam around and make you orgasm unsupervised? Let's get some other automaton out of control kthxbie.
And now, the punch line.
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Wait for it...
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If you build it, they will...
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
It's hard for me to see how we will allow various technologies like self-driving cars to go forward while still holding back the war machines. I mean, I want to hold back the war machines, but writing a law to keep those two use cases separate will be tricky. A child runs out into the street... does the self driving car hit the child or swerve possibly hitting some other car? Does the car evaluate the people in the other vehicle? Whatever logic we put into the cars, that's the same logic -- inverted -- that would run the war machines.
I hope we have high wisdom politicians writing that particular body of law. I know... improbable... but hope springs eternal.
On the one hand, I would prefer if wars were always soldier-versus-soldier. On the other hand, I would rather see a robot on the battlefield making automatic decisions about what to attack than a bomb dropped from an airplane -- at least a robot can be programmed not to kill civilians or needlessly destroy civilian infrastructure (e.g. schools, hospitals).
Where I see a problem is with robots being programmed to recklessly kill -- a genocide could be committed rapidly by robots, which would require no indoctrination and would not refuse to target a particular group. I also see an issue akin to the problem with landmines, where robots might remain hidden, armed, and active long after a war ends. There is also the issue of robots recording or not recording their actions, which might be a concern during a war crimes trial (soldiers can testify that they were ordered to shoot children or deploy nerve gas; robots might not record such details).
Palm trees and 8
Clearly, they need to be designed with a pre-set kill limit.
One of the problems that I have long had with the idea of robot soldiers is that it makes war too easy. When you have huge emotional and financial costs to war your government will think twice about either getting involved or at least be pressured into "Bringing the boys home." but if you are sending robot planes with loads of robot warriors, why not have a war, or two, or five? A bunch of dead dehumanized "others' is not so bad especially seeing that it generates jobs at homes and pork spending for politicians.
War is rarely the correct solution. In fact it it usually a clear sign of a long series of failures or the sign of a madman.
Plus robotic warriors are, for the next short while, going to be the plaything of western countries. But how long before some tin-pot nut job flies the same machines into NYC or LA? Or even a homebrew nutjob? Again the key is that the consequences are potentially far less for the perpetrator. You can't usefully arrest the bot. You mightn't even end up with the slightest clue who sent it. Again the same problem. This tool makes waging whatever stupid war that pops into your head too easy.
Robots have the potential to turn this planet into Utopia or into Distopia. I suspect that some governments are philosophically predisposed toward Utopia and others Distopia in regards to using robots wisely. A simple question: If your country can, using robots, vastly decrease the cost of running prisons will your country increase its incarceration rate?
There's a famous Alexis Gilliland cartoon of a cruise missile thinking "They've got me aimed at a computer center! I'll just fly a bit farther and hit the maternity ward."
I suppose autonomous drones could be viewed as landmines that happen to move and make decisions about their targets. So, if banning landmines makes sense, maybe so would banning autonomous drones.
The biggest reason to ban robotic soldiers is because people (humans) get sick of war.
The biggest reason to ban robotic soldiers is that without killing people there is no point to war. before deciding that I am a lunatic, parse that for a while.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"Death, destruction, disease, horror...that's what war is all about, Anan, that's what makes it a thing to be avoided. You've made it so neat and painless you've had no reason to stop it."
+1 fashionably cynical