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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.
To welcome our new Killer Robot overlords.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
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. And the 1995 Protocol on Blinding Laser Weapons now has 104 signatories, who have agreed to ban the weapons on the grounds that they could cause excessive suffering to soldiers in the form of permanent blindness."
Enjoy :)
...You have 20 seconds to comply.
When you're dead, you don't know you're dead. It only affects the people around you. Same thing when you're stupid.
Blinding weapons are banned? Not so.
From that article:
[...] a soldier he interviewed after an incident in Iraq a few years ago. While on duty, the soldier fumbled a dazzler he was trying to point at an oncoming vehicle a safe distance away. “He was in an awkward position and illuminated a rearview mirror in such a way that he got a beam directly back into the eye.” The beam had gone less than 6 metres when it hit the soldier in the centre of vision of his right eye, burning the retina and leaving his vision in that eye permanently damaged.
Yeah, right. Blinding lasers are banned from military use, except that the military uses them and (from the article) are being made available to police departments.
I'm missing something here - is it OK if it blinds soldiers so long as the *intent* is not to blind soldiers? Is the ban only for *combat* soldiers and not policing soldiers? Is it only banned in *declared wars*, and not *non-war military invasions*?
Can anyone explain why we use dazzlers when they appear to be on the banned list?
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/
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.
Is this going to be part of the new Slashdot too?
Scorta futuere amo!
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.
I can name three countries that would not exist today without land mines;
1. South Korea
2. Taiwan
3. Israel
Used properly as by these three countries land mines are an equalizer. Used improperly as in South East Asia and Africa they are a menace.
Mining beaches is a great way to deter invasion. Up until 2013 Kinmen and Matsu Islands were heavily mined to deter invasion by China. An invasion of the main island could not take place without neutralizing those islands first. Taiwan has removed those land mines but has not destroyed their stockpile. They can still be deployed if China looks like they will invade.
I find it sad that the people who want to ban land mines will not guarantee the sovereignty of the countries that need them to exist.
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 *