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Debating a Ban On Autonomous Weapons (thebulletin.org)
Lasrick writes: A pretty informative debate on banning autonomous weapons has just closed at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. The debate looks at an open letter, published In July, 2015, in which researchers in artificial intelligence and robotics (and endorsed by high-profile individuals such as Stephen Hawking) called for 'a ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control.' The letter echoes arguments made since 2013 by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, which views autonomous weapons as 'a fundamental challenge to the protection of civilians and to international human rights and humanitarian law.'
But support for a ban is not unanimous. Some researchers argue that autonomous weapons would commit fewer battlefield atrocities than human beings—and that their development might even be considered morally imperative. The authors in this debate focus on these questions: Would deployed autonomous weapons promote or detract from civilian safety; and is an outright ban the proper response to development of autonomous weapons?
But support for a ban is not unanimous. Some researchers argue that autonomous weapons would commit fewer battlefield atrocities than human beings—and that their development might even be considered morally imperative. The authors in this debate focus on these questions: Would deployed autonomous weapons promote or detract from civilian safety; and is an outright ban the proper response to development of autonomous weapons?
When autonomous weapons are outlawed, only outlaws will have unstoppable armies of soulless killing machines.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
But support for a ban is not unanimous. Some researchers argue that autonomous weapons would commit fewer battlefield atrocities than human beings—and that their development might even be considered morally imperative.
In particular, Dr. Miles Dyson and his associates, Drs. Skyler Natalya and Keel Lbot, Ph.D.
And the answer is when it becomes human.
Humans killed 400+ civilians at My Lai, and 200+ civilians at No Gun Ri. Both massacres were the result of rage and fear. Robots don't feel those emotions, and have committed no massacres on that scale. I trust robots more than I trust humans.
Restrictions on nuclear warheads, ships, etc. make sense because they can be verified. Restrictions on software have no means of verification, so any ban on autonomous robots is wishful thinking.
What's the difference between a search-and-rescue bot and a kill bot? The function is going to pretty much identical right up to the point the target is located, just duct tape a gun to point in same direction as the camera and wire the "person located" signal to pull the trigger. It's one thing to ban ABC weapons because they're very specific technologies, but this is way too generic to work. And it's not like the military is going to avoid developing it for intelligence gathering and decision support systems, even if you keep a human in the loop it's literally going to be one flip of the switch to full automatic where the computer's recommendations are implemented by itself.
The primary reason to keep soldiers in the loop today is because you're trying to fight a "good war" and avoid antagonizing the civilians so you want manual confirmation of each target, if you take the gloves off and say if you're found outside after curfew we'll shoot to kill and live with the collateral you could automate much more. And don't get up on the high horse, when the US nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki they knew there's be about 100-200k civilian casualties. In a real war nobody's going to give a fuck if the robots are just 99% or 95% right, if it can save our troops and civilians and end the war for sure we're going to let them fight for us.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
No, it's just that if an autonomous weapon does it, it would be more difficult to call it an "atrocity". If a dozen villagers are killed because of a minefield that some idiot decided should go near where they live, the only reason you can't call that a "massacre" is that there was no human making the targeting decision.
In the 1920s, there were some who argued that aerial bombing would be more humane because they could be far more precise than field artillery, hitting only the target that you want to hit. Look how well that worked out.
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Landmines kill little kids without asking. Do we want more things killing automatically?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Many restricted military technologies are fairly easy to detect. Nuclear weapons require a massive industrial input that has well known signatures, for example.
A robot is different. It can be something that's dual use. One day it's a regular robot. Look at the software. All civilian and a nice strong optics mount point on it.
Change the software and swap some of the camera gear for a small machine gun and use the rest for aiming, it's a killbot. This is just one example. Another obvious one is putting an autonomous drone software package into the flight computers of an airplane that can also be manned. This game can go on and on with just about any weapons system you can think of.
It doesn't take industrial facilities that are different from usual ones to make them. If you can make versatile robots for civilian use, and separately make weapons you just have to put them together at the last minute. They don't have any particular signatures the way chemical weapons and their precursors do. Most nations are already making ordinance, so who's to say whether a human is going to be in the loop to fire it or if it's triggered by an AI?
If people want to cheat on this, it'll be pretty easy to do so.
So far, the landmine bans haven't seemed to have slowed down the planting of them a bit in various wars. We have to have demining teams, not just for cleaning up old wars, but the very ones that are going on now.
I don't expect this to have a much greater effect.
Robots also do not feel mercy, and they never question orders - no matter how deranged.
Arguably while war is all about winning, it's not at "all cost".
It isn't, because we've been winning for a long time... that changes when you're losing... Look at the Japanese 1944-45, with the Divine Wind and tell me they weren't willing to pay any price?
It took nuclear weapons to get them to see reason.
Even though war is a terrible and bloody affair, we as societies have constantly been moving towards more humane and less deadly conflict.
From your safe place behind a safe computer, you can say that.
Go ask the people in Syria if they feel like they are taking part in a "more humane and less deadly conflict".
You're kidding yourself if you think that is war. War is hell, and you don't win by "only kinda sorta almost fighting..." You win by so completely crushing your enemy that he puts up the white flag and says "you win, sorry for all that, let us know what the new rules are"
Anything less and it never really ends.
Pretty shit logical reasoning given that robots have never been in a position where they are capable of committing a massacre on that scale. Kim Jong Un has never ordered the use of nuclear weapons so maybe we should give him control of US nukes.
The biggest issue with robot soldiers isn't that they'll make "evil decisions" it's that when a country can engage in warfare without risking its civilians lives it's likely to get involved in more conflicts. That isn't to say that there are no valid concerns about how robots will be programmed, and ordered, to behave in the field as well.
The original Robocop movie correctly predicted how these things might turn out. Infallible is not the adjective to apply.
Still, at least it shot a company exec during a demo, so not a total failure.
You lack imagination.
Think of an autonomous weapon that lays dormant until it detects something in range, then wakes up, kills it and goes back to sleep.
A landmine on steroids.
You think that won't happen?
But robots could be turned on and ordered to do atrocities that no human would agree to do.
If a rogue general wanted to convince US soldiers to kill everyone in the White House, or to kill everyone in Congress, he would find it very difficult. It would take almost nothing for a rogue General to convince a squadron of drones to do the exact same thing.
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