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Their might is asymmetrical, but power is mitigated by the willingness of an organization of humans to follow commands. There is a limit to how far a soldier wi
by singlow 10y ago
Their might is asymmetrical, but power is mitigated by the willingness of an organization of humans to follow commands. There is a limit to how far a soldier will go, ethically.
- gbhn 10y agoTrue, true, but somehow that's never been much of an obstacle to totalitarian governments. Somehow there's always a soldier who will push the button. In Nuremberg we developed a way to think about this: people outside the central circles of power have a tremendous amount of pressures they are considering. It's definitely the case that some are sadistic and horrible, but more are just following orders and trying to get by as best they can, and punishing them for war crimes is not appropriate. The other side of that coin is that it isn't realistic to expect soldiery en masse to resist illegal orders. It's always more complicated than that.
- paganel 10y ago> Somehow there's always a soldier who will push the button. And then there's always that soldier ready to denounce his camarads for having raped some poor Vietnamese women who had nothing to do with the war itself. Why risk such a PR disaster which might see your funding cut when you can use robots instead? Warzone robots don't snitch on their fellow robots in front of the press and they don't rape, they're only build to kill.
- MaysonL 10y ago> True, true, but somehow that's never been much of an obstacle to totalitarian governments. Somehow there's always a soldier who will push the button. Actually, the unwillingness of the Red Army to do any more invasions was arguably the precipitating factor in the fall of the Soviet empire. In 1988, Gorbachev gave a speech to the Warsaw pact meeting where he told them that the Brezhnev doctrine was no more. No socialist government would be able any longer to count on Russian aid in putting down popular uprisings. A year later, the empire crumbled. Of course, it wasn't the soldiers per se who refused, but the generals who were afraid of the potential mutinies (and the occasional actual ones).
- idlewords 10y agoIt was Gorbachev who refused, not the generals.
- MaysonL 10y agoHe couldn't have refused without the support of the generals, who had just withdrawn from Afghanistan.
- Nevermark 10y agoVery true. And economic problems were a big incentive for everyone in charge to step back from wars. For country's with a strong economy there would be little incentive to stop, especially if AI makes war cheaper.
- sweetjesus 10y agoUnless you're talking about the Nuremberg Rallies, you've got your history screwed up: "just following orders" is NOT a defense against war crime accusations, and punishing those who commit war crimes "trying to get by as best they can" is completely appropriate, was the conclusion of the Nuremberg Trials. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Principles#Principle_IV https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuremberg_Principles#Principle...
- zardo 10y ago>There is a limit to how far a soldier will go, ethically. What horrible things to you have in mind that armies have not already done?
- modeless 10y agoIt's not that AIs will do worse things than humans have already done. It's that AIs will do those terrible things much more efficiently and with much lower risk to the people in charge.
- Ygg2 10y agoOn the plus side - no more rape.
- Senji 10y agoDon't be so sure. I'm sure there will be rape drones soon.
- keldaris 10y agoI don't think you can hope for even that much. Rape has historically been systematically used for terrorizing the population in order to achieve military and/or political aims. An AI free from any ethical concerns could conceivably evaluate it as an efficient strategy for achieving some set of goals and proceed accordingly.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- nradov 10y agoReally? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
- vkreso 10y agoAs horrific as Nanking Massacre was, I believe that doesn't really prove your point. I'd argue that a lot of counter examples of soldiers ethical behaviour simply aren't visible and are forgotten and lost to history (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias)
- Spooky23 10y agoNo there isn't. It's easy enough to manipulate the individual to do anything. We speak of Nazis frequnetly, but consider what Curtis LeMay did in war and prepared to do after the war. AI and robots give plausible deniability and reduce the number of witnesses. They also make suicide raids more practical.
- kmonsen 10y agoYes, almost all revolutions succeed because the army turns. It doesn't happen all the time, but some of the time is enough to put some checks on people wanting to take control.
- erikbye 10y agoWhich limit are you talking about? I guess you have forgotten what the soldiers of the third reich did. Or American death squads in Afghanistan. Might as well call them rape and death squads. What about Guantanamo? Srebrenica? Should I go on? How unenlightened and naive are you?
- sctb 10y agoPlease comment civilly and substantively—without personal attacks—or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html