US Navy Wants Smart Robots With Morals, Ethics

coondoggie writes: "The U.S. Office of Naval Research this week offered a $7.5m grant to university researchers to develop robots with autonomous moral reasoning ability. While the idea of robots making their own ethical decisions smacks of SkyNet — the science-fiction artificial intelligence system featured prominently in the Terminator films — the Navy says that it envisions such systems having extensive use in first-response, search-and-rescue missions, or medical applications. One possible scenario: 'A robot medic responsible for helping wounded soldiers is ordered to transport urgently needed medication to a nearby field hospital. En route, it encounters a Marine with a fractured leg. Should the robot abort the mission to assist the injured? Will it? If the machine stops, a new set of questions arises. The robot assesses the soldier’s physical state and determines that unless it applies traction, internal bleeding in the soldier's thigh could prove fatal. However, applying traction will cause intense pain. Is the robot morally permitted to cause the soldier pain, even if it’s for the soldier’s well-being?'"

Comments

Re:what they should want

[Vinegar Joe]

Why don't you ask Ambassador Chris Stevens, Sean Smith, Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty about that........

Re: Ethics and Morals ?

[Sasayaki]

Snipers are cowardly? What the actual fuck.

Here's the thing. War isn't very nice. In war the objective is to stop the enemy from resisting your movements. There are lots of ways of doing this, but the best way is by killing them. In order to do this, you want to kill as many of them as necessary, while getting your own guys killed the least. This is, distilled down to its purist essence, war.

So it's not cowardly to snipe from a rooftop, drop bombs from 50,000 feet, or launch Hellfires from a continent away. It's smart.

I dislike this kind of thinking--discouraging "cowardly" tactics--because it romanticizes war. It suggests that there is a civilized, warm, friendly way of blowing people in half and letting them die screaming in the desert. There isn't.

The only thing worse than fighting a war is losing a war. The best you can hope for is that your side fights as few wars as possible, that when you do fight your cause is righteous, that you win every single fight you get into, and that your victories are overwhelming, absolute, and you beat your enemies so laughably that nobody ever fucks with you ever again. You want to fight stupidly unfairly. Boots crushing bugs if you can. You want artillery, bombs, laser guided ICBMs. You want to win as cheaply and sneakily as humanly possible. You want to kill your enemies in such a way that they never, ever had the slightest chance of even seeing you coming, let alone fighting back. You want them to have bow and arrow, while you have lightning bolts.

"Cowardly". Phht. You can go march in the front lines, bravely facing the guns, down in the dirt, the mud, the bodies. Me, I'll push back my reclining chair, adjust the AC, order another hot hazelnut mocca because my last one's a bit chilly, angle a camera a thousand kilometers away a little to the left, press "shoot" and waste one hundred and fifty dudes armed to the teeth in a symphony of fire and destruction, collect my medals, then catch the subway home for tea and sex with my hot wife.

If that makes me a coward, fine. I can live with that.

Disclaimer: I don't have a hot wife.