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'Don't Fear the Robopocalypse': the Case for Autonomous Weapons (thebulletin.org)
Lasrick shares "Don't fear the robopocalypse," an interview from the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists with the former Army Ranger who led the team that established the U.S. Defense Department policy on autonomous weapons (and has written the upcoming book Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War). Paul Scharre makes the case for uninhabited vehicles, robot teammates, and maybe even an outer perimeter of robotic sentries (and, for mobile troops, "a cloud of air and ground robotic systems"). But he also argues that "In general, we should strive to keep humans involved in the lethal force decision-making process as much as is feasible. What exactly that looks like in practice, I honestly don't know."
So does that mean he thinks we'll eventually see the deployment of fully autonomous weapons in combat? I think it's very hard to imagine a world where you physically take the capacity out of the hands of rogue regimes... The technology is so ubiquitous that a reasonably competent programmer could build a crude autonomous weapon in their garage. The idea of putting some kind of nonproliferation regime in place that actually keeps the underlying technology out of the hands of people -- it just seems really naive and not very realistic. I think in that kind of world, you have to anticipate that there are, at a minimum, going to be uses by terrorists and rogue regimes. I think it's more of an open question whether we cross the threshold into a world where nation-states are using them on a large scale.
And if so, I think it's worth asking, what do we mean by"them"? What degree of autonomy? There are automated defensive systems that I would characterize as human-supervised autonomous weapons -- where a human is on the loop and supervising its operation -- in use by at least 30 countries today. They've been in use for decades and really seem to have not brought about the robopocalypse or anything. I'm not sure that those [systems] are particularly problematic. In fact, one could see them as being even more beneficial and valuable in an age when things like robot swarming and cooperative autonomy become more possible.
So does that mean he thinks we'll eventually see the deployment of fully autonomous weapons in combat? I think it's very hard to imagine a world where you physically take the capacity out of the hands of rogue regimes... The technology is so ubiquitous that a reasonably competent programmer could build a crude autonomous weapon in their garage. The idea of putting some kind of nonproliferation regime in place that actually keeps the underlying technology out of the hands of people -- it just seems really naive and not very realistic. I think in that kind of world, you have to anticipate that there are, at a minimum, going to be uses by terrorists and rogue regimes. I think it's more of an open question whether we cross the threshold into a world where nation-states are using them on a large scale.
And if so, I think it's worth asking, what do we mean by"them"? What degree of autonomy? There are automated defensive systems that I would characterize as human-supervised autonomous weapons -- where a human is on the loop and supervising its operation -- in use by at least 30 countries today. They've been in use for decades and really seem to have not brought about the robopocalypse or anything. I'm not sure that those [systems] are particularly problematic. In fact, one could see them as being even more beneficial and valuable in an age when things like robot swarming and cooperative autonomy become more possible.
Autonomous killing machines are a frankly horrific idea. In principle, machines should serve us, NEVER the other way around. On first principles alone the idea that a machine could determine who to kill and who not to kill is a chilling idea.
And in practice, its a terrible idea. Human soldiers already face baffling moral situations. Woman with child at checkpoint acting suspiciously. Maybe suicide bomber. But she has a child. To shoot or not to shoot. Thats the kind of thing guaranteed to give a marine a gnarly case of PTSD,if he choses wrong, and possibly also a dead mother and child (or conversely a dead platoon). But the possibiliy of a horrifically wrong choice means that Marine is going to deploy ever fragment of reason his brain can muster. . How the hell would we entrust such a monumental decision to a robot. Its "wrong" choice has no repercussions for it. If it kills an innocent mother, it doesnt care, its just a thing. If it opts for caution and it choses wrong, it still doesnt care, its already dead. Theres no incentive anywhere up the chain of command to get this right, because 'Well a robot chose badly, sorry not our fault!' is a get out of jail free to just let the bloody thing go robocop on a civilian population. We *morally* AND *practically* NEED humans in that decision loop, even if its just some guy in an air conditioned office and a VR headset.
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
I think we have well and truly crossed the cost line now. trained soldiers are expensive. A deployed soldier can be upwards of half a million a year in costs. drones and bots can already be more cost effective in many situations, the cost benefits are only going to accelerate more rapidly from here, I would say a large portion of the military personnel is very much on the countdown to obsolescence.
Slaughterbots: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA&t=
It will be a lot safer for the public: no more cops who claim they are "under pressure" or "affraid" so they had to shoot first. A robot can afford to shoot last, only when fired uppon first.
As we all know, the enemy always follows the rules. Right on back to some dirty farmers hiding in the woods not following the British 'rules of war'.
The technology to build these things is not difficult. In the US a gun is easiest part of the puzzle. Toss in some OpenCV, webcam, a solenoid and you can have your own private sentry.
War has and will always be over either control of people of control over what people own. Both can be done much more efficiently with data. The war is already going on and not just the Russians who influence the elections. (legally or illegally) Also by the American, by companies and by anybody else.
And as always, the people losing most, be it their money or their freedom or both, are the common people.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
A deployed soldier can be upwards of half a million a year in costs.
[Citation needed]
In the land of $100 hammers and $1000 toilet seats, you really need proof of this? Give me a fucking break.
Yes, we need a citation, because the $500k number is total bullcrap. It is implausible that a deployed combat soldier, at the far end of a 10,000 mile supply chain, costs so little.
Here is a citation that the actual cost is $850k to $1.4 million per soldier per year.
War ain't cheap.
let hem battle it out on a deserted remote island, whoever's AI robot army is still standing in the end wins.
General Zaroff and the BattleBots? That's one hell of a mash-up. Cool band name.
ofcourse, then the question becomes, why not just run a computer simultation instead.
Telling the kids it's just a game will be the prescription to prevent PTSD. Let's just hope they don't talk to Ender Wiggin.
Given a choice, which would you rather have come to your village:
1. A carefully designed, programmed and tested robot
2. A squad of soldiers that haven't slept in two days or eaten in 18 hours, and who just medevaced a comrade who had his leg blown off below the knee by a booby trap
Are you really sure you want a human decision maker "in the loop"?
"a killing machine with unwavering loyalty and a complete absence of conscious"
That's not the problem.
If you, a civilian police officer, are faced with a terrorist attack by a semi-autonomous robotic rifle, trigger being pulled at maximum rate (or a bump stock being part of the mechanism), immune to small arms fire, able to target accurately out to 100 yards, and able to negotiate stairs and open doors, what do you do, wait for the military to respond?
Such devices are well within reach of determined and moderately funded groups. Remotely guided devices seem simpler. Change the weapon to a pistol and put it on a hefty drone and you have air cover and the death toll is tripled, mostly first responders.
It's not the lack of conscience of the devices, it's the lack of conscience of the criminals building and deploying them. We face enemies that have a different conscience than we do, one incompatible with our typical morals. THAT is the problem. They will build and use weapons of unacceptable, unimaginable brutality and efficiency, all to achieve their goals.
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
Unlike like a growing number of countries, the US hasn't yet agreed to a ban on use of land mines.
These (simple) machines can automatically indiscriminately kill, with essentially no protection against civilian deaths, and
can remain active for many many years.
It's not really like video game to the drone operators: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/u...
You're quite correct that remote killing machines operated by humans are little better than fully autonomous ones.
Think globally but act within local variable scope.
Good lord, you've made the best case for robots I've ever heard. A human being having to make a tough choice that can easily result in an innocent woman's death or his platoons, and said choice scaring him for life? Even if he makes it correctly? Holy hell man, protecting people from danger like that is why we build robots. Just offloading the decision to someone else can help prevent PTSD for the soldier on the ground. Robots can make of sensors at a range to get a better probability assessment it's a suicide bomber. Couple that with a robot that can approach the woman and get blown up and not mind (unlike a human soldier), therefore tweaking the cost of a false negative, and you have a far superior system.
Your ad here. Ask me how!
The recent drone attack on an army base has more or less convinced me that even non-state actors are finding automated weaponry a good choice. So costs can't be too much of a barrier.
OTOH, flexibility is still superior for the human. Most robots can only deal with a relatively small number of cases, and none are even approximately as good at self-repair. (But it's easier to replace parts...so that may be an even trade-off, except for costs.)
It strikes me as an extremely dangerous direction to head, but it also seems to be one that we are definitely headed in, because even if one group doesn't do it, another will.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
This does not surprise me at all, especially as the cost is arrived at by taking the total campaign cost divided by the number of soldiers.
Everything the US military does costs an eye-popping amount. The V22 Osprey costs $64000/hour to operate. The Bradley AFV cost over $50 for every mile driven. Recoilless rifle ammunition runs between $500 and $3000 per round. Every time an A10 opens up its mighty 3900/ round/minute cannon, each of those rounds costs $150.
The current administration's plans for increases in troop levels in Afghanistan are expected to cost the US taxpayer over a trillion dollars when all the downstream costs are included. In return they hope to secure access to about a trillion dollars in mineral reserves for US companies.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Given a choice, which would you rather have come to your village:
1. A carefully designed, programmed and tested robot
2. A squad of soldiers that haven't slept in two days or eaten in 18 hours, and who just medevaced a comrade who had his leg blown off below the knee by a booby trap
Are you really sure you want a human decision maker "in the loop"?
1. A carefully designed, programmed (to kill all humans) and tested robot
for that terrifying thought. I never thought about us automating our military. The US army is the world's biggest social program. The Military Industrial Complex was thought up as a way to keep the US economy going in the face of crazy wealth inequality. I knew driving jobs are going away. I suspect all but the highest level IT jobs will go some day and eventually even coding jobs. But I forgot about the army. Man, are we in for a rough time with this second (third?) industrial revolution...
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That greatly depends on the overall strategy for the war.
1. To drain the opposition of support
or
2. To crush the opposition by force
The former is what most Americans in living history now know, like the Korean war, the Vietnam war, the Gulf war etc. and in that case it's true. You don't have rouge elements, you don't have soldiers on a power trip that rape, pillage and murder. You don't have soldiers who fear for their own lives and who'd rather cause incidental or accidental damage to civilians than risk getting shot and killed themselves. There's no more caskets of American servicemen being flown home and no more public outcry, all you have to do to play world police is pay for replacements.
That's not how you occupy a country. That's not how Nazi Germany crushed France. That's not how the Allies crushed Nazi Germany. That's not how the US made the Japanese surrender. It's basically saying we're going to pound you into the ground and keep pounding until you beg for mercy. If there's attacks or sabotage on our forces we'll retaliate ten times harder or just round up a bunch of civilians and shoot them. And if we want to do a little genocide or ethnic/religious cleansing that's what we'll do.
In that situations robots are the perfect psychopaths. They have no guilt or remorse, they don't feel the hate and anger, they don't care if they're despised and attacked, they don't desert or refuse to follow orders. They don't care if the targets are civilian or military, young or old, women and children. And you can say it's the same as a gun today, bullets don't care. The difference is that the guy pulling the trigger is 10000 miles away playing Counterstrike or maybe just playing a real world game of Civilization. City in riot? Send in the troops.
It would be nice fantasy if the atrocities of war happened because of the atrocities of war. But those manning the gas chambers of the Holocaust weren't hungry, tired, revengeful or full of PTSD. Neither have most invading generals throughout history been, they command and other people suffer and preferably the other side. Just because we take away the "burden" of fighting on the front lines doesn't mean those people will stop shuffling pieces on a chess board to win. In fact, they'd probably just find it easier if the pawns stop complaining.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings