3 ms·
These aren't infallible defense only hug-bots we're talking about. They're not going to just grab your arm they are more likely to shoot you and anyone else who
by baconner 11y ago
These aren't infallible defense only hug-bots we're talking about. They're not going to just grab your arm they are more likely to shoot you and anyone else who happens to be too close to you.
Imagine instead summary execution by robot because an algorithm decides that you look enough like a known terrorist or your call metadata seems terroristish and you're in the wrong neighborhood. Imagine the violent collective punishment that can be brought to bear on a population in retaliation for something like a suicide bombing.
- 13thLetter 11y agoAre you saying that human intelligence agencies would never go after innocent people and human military forces would never carry out violent collective punishment against a civilian population? Think carefully... There's this weird blind spot in the robot weapons debate where we shudder in fear of robots committing acts that are already being committed in job lots by humans every day. We don't need machines to be inhumane! The problem is not weapons, the problem is human beings choosing to do bad things, and scapegoating robots will do absolutely nothing to fix that.
- baconner 11y agoNo that's not what I am saying at all. I'm saying I think they can have the effect of making it easier for a person to kill more people with less risk of consequence and that the lack of consequence makes violence easier to turn to as a solution. I am not afraid of robots, I am afraid of humans granted the ability to shield themselves from consequence for killing.
- 13thLetter 11y agoAnd what I'm saying is that people -- real people, not some unnamed "person" from some unspecified country or culture who may exist at some point in the future -- are already turning to violence as a solution, without the need for robots. Bashir Assad doesn't have killer robots and neither does Vladimir Putin and neither do the mullahs of Iran, but somehow they're managing.
- baconner 11y agoI don't see the relevance of that point. The existence of violence without a particular weapon does not refute the argument that a new weapon may lead to even more death and suffering. By your logic since violence already exists apparently we shouldn't worry about new weapons making it even worse. Back to the original point of the article it is important that international standards limiting such devastating weapons be enacted and enforced. Even Assad after being caught using chemical weapons was forced to step back and many robotic weapons, especially autonomous ones, should probably be in the same category for the same reason. These things are going to be developed so we need to act now to limit their use not wait until a calamity has struck.
- 13thLetter 11y ago> Back to the original point of the article it is important that international standards limiting such devastating weapons be enacted and enforced. One of the reasons I'm skeptical about the importance of this is, I guess I still don't understand what the nightmare scenario is. You call these weapons "devastating" and say that they will lead to even more death and suffering than currently existing weapons. How? An autonomous robot with a gun can't kill you any more dead than a human with a gun, and as Assad and Putin have demonstrated the lack of robots didn't keep them from just sending humans instead.
- happyscrappy 11y agoWhy are they more likely to shoot you? They will do what we program them to do and we could send them into situations too dangerous for a human team. It wouldn't need to have a gun.