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Only Twice Have Nations Banned a Weapon Before It Was Used; They May Do It Again
Lasrick writes: Seth Baum reports on international efforts to ban 'killer robots' before they are used. China, Israel, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States are apparently developing precursor technology. "Fully autonomous weapons are not unambiguously bad. They can reduce burdens on soldiers. Already, military robots are saving many service members' lives, for example by neutralizing improvised explosive devices in Afghanistan and Iraq. The more capabilities military robots have, the more they can keep soldiers from harm. They may also be able to complete missions that soldiers and non-autonomous weapons cannot." But Baum, who founded the Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, goes on to outline the potential downsides, and there are quite a few.
When you are able to keep hackers from defacing your national websites.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
In 1868, the Great Powers agreed under the Saint Petersburg Declaration to ban exploding bullets, which by spreading metal fragments inside a victim’s body could cause more suffering than the regular kind
Which sounds awesome on paper but is completely meaningless in the real world. NATO's standard rifle cartridge relies on tumbling and fragmentation for its terminal effects. I'm not certain why it matters if a bullet fragments because of a small explosive charge or because of the design of the projectile; the end result is the same.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Fred Saberhagen's Berserkers come to mind.
Remember that? That was the 1928 pact that outlawed war.
You might remember how well that worked out.
This will work out just swell until Russia or China or ISIS develop an effective fighting robot and are able to deploy them in sufficient quantities to make a decisive difference in battle.
Plus there's the impossibility of enforcement. How can you prove it was a robot rather than a remote-operated drone?
And there's the tiny issue that, knowing how slowly the wheels of the "international community's" court systems turn, the war is likely to be won or lost before those violating it ever come to trial...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
6m is not the intended distance of deployment. At longer distances it does not blind, but instead causes the headaches, dizziness, and nausea it was designed for. Thus, it is not a blinding weapon but a visual deterrent.
I'm missing something here - is it OK if it blinds soldiers so long as the *intent* is not to blind soldiers?
Yes? Obviously? I mean, a pistol fired right next to the face can blind you as well (or deafen you if fired next to the ear, possibly permanently). That's not banned, because the point of the pistol is to kill people with bullets, not cripple them. In fact, virtually any weapon (and most tools, such as tanks, planes, etc.) can cause all kinds of debilitating damage if used in the wrong way or if someone ends up in the wrong situation, even if they're not designed to do that. Hell, a pair of binoculars can cause permanent blindness if you look at the sun through them. Can cause blindness isn't a good reason to ban anything.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
There was an episode of ST:TOS on this point. Two planets had warring factions and they had managed to reduce it to basically a computer program that simulated attacks and decided who was killed by them. Those people were then supposed to show up to a center to be exterminated. The problem of course was that since there weren't all the hardships of war... famine, disease, destruction etc... it had gone on for ages. Kirk's solution of course was to destroy the computer so they'd either have to fight the old fashioned messy way or actually settle their differences.
Like many of those episodes I think it really did touch on the realities of the human mind. If war becomes too detached, too clean and simple then we will put much less effort into diplomacy. I'm not a pacifist, but I do think war should be a last option. And it should be messy and painful so that we'll try to find ways to end it.
Robots that kill the enemy will "save lives' and keep soldiers from harm.
They've saved far more lives than they've taken.
Citation needed. An estimated 15,000 to 20,000 people are killed each year by landmines. What you really mean is that you don't live with them in your community, and are therefore unconcerned by the impact of these killing devices. And now you think autonomous, mobile killing machines is a *good* idea. If you live in the USA, then it might pay to do some research in the militarisation of your police forces - and then think about whether you really want these kinds of things being built by the military-industrial complex.
It's good luck to be superstitious
you are going to have to pry my auto-turret from my cold dead fingers.
No, they'll have a robot to do that for them.
Missile defence systems normally have a fully autunomous setting.
The machine is trusted not to shoot down airlines.
Many would argue that this has already happened. America hasn't had a proper military attack on their own soil since Pearl Harbour (no, the odd terrorist bombing or 911 do not count as a proper military attack) and they haven't had a proper war at home since the civil war.
American warfare is something that happens far away and now America - a country that used to say it's against their constitution to even HAVE a standing military (one can be RAISED in times of war but should not be kept in peace-time - to discourage ever being the attacker) is not only the owners of the world's largest military but also pretty much constantly in a state of war with *somebody*.
A large part of why is because war is something that happens far away and the only American's really affected are the soldiers on the ground, the only time it hits home is if one of the soldiers who don't come back is a family member.
The rest of the time - wars are distant, so there is no deterrent for the voters to seriously oppose even completely needless wars like Iraq.
Of course, ISIS is a direct consequence of the Iraq war and now there may well be ANOTHER war... and again, it's because the bad things all happen far, far away.
If the drone program eventually unleashes a full-scale war in Pakistan - it will be because the killing was too easy, too clean and too far away.
American's don't feel war on their skin anymore, so they no longer appreciate it's horror and it becomes a first rather than a last resort.
The last war that there was significant protest against was Vietnam and that was only because of the draft - when people were being FORCED to go fight... suddenly, the war was a little closer to home, and even a tiny bit closer was enough to unleash massive protests.
It's easy to be pro-war if you have never SEEN war.
On the other hand, I live in a country that was in a massive war for the majority of my youth. I've seen the horrors first hand... and I am pretty much a pacifist as a result.
If you attack us, I'll join up to fight you back, but I will ALWAYS and WITHOUT EXCEPTION oppose a war on foreign soil by my government.
Wars should be close to home - it's the only way people will actually treat them as a last resort.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
If you're that unable to grasp the difference between the possibility that someone might be carrying a weapon (say, in a violin case), and cops responding to someone's alarmed call about a guy brandishing a gun in public, and having that gun waved at them as they arrive on the scene, then you are completely out of touch with reality. Cops get killed, more often than you seem to know (or perhaps not as often as you'd like?) for misjudging the risk to their lives as they come upon such scenes or make a traffic stop. If you did that all day, every day, and some of your colleagues died doing what you have to do for your job, you might look at it a little differently. You're probably thinking that the police should have just hidden behind their magic bullet-proof cruiser doors like in the movies, right? Yeah. That kid shouldn't be dead. I blame his parents, 100%.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.