5 ms·

Maybe if they were more accurate they would kill less people?

tclancy 9y ago
Maybe if they're more accurate the marginal cost of killing people in other parts of the world will go down even more so we'll be even less likely to reflect on whether the fact we can easily use robots to kill people on the other side of the world who have no way of responding symmetrically might come back to bite us in the ass?
- jimmaswell 9y ago
  I don't think the marginal cost of these things has been that much of a consideration in the past. Less American military personnel will be put in harm's way as technology like this advances. Maybe wars will even be mostly unmanned remotely controlled machine-vs-machine in the future.
  - tclancy 9y ago
    I was using that phrase a little loosely to mean "Fewer American soldiers being hurt or killed".
- airstrike 9y ago
  Nobody cares how many dimes those drones cost. War isn’t fought using the cheapest means available, but the most effective. Have you seen the size of the U.S. military budget? This country will continue to meddle in international affairs and, on occasion, get involved in bloody battles. Such is life. War is an integral part of our civilization and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. You can’t just wish it away.
  - tclancy 9y ago
    I feel like this would all be a little more interesting coming from a different username.
    - nbar1 9y ago
      The point is certainly valid. If Google steps out of this, they are just going to find someone to fill those shoes.
      - tclancy 9y ago
        No, that's simply not true. Lots of things were "Just how things are" until enough people stood up and said "No". Googles' employees are actually using their privilege to try to make a high-profile stand. No idea if it will make a difference, but it is far better than not trying.
    - airstrike 9y ago
      For what is worth my nickname is from the Sigur Ros song Vidrar vel til loftarasa...
      - tclancy 9y ago
        Ha, that's awesome!
  - davesque 9y ago
    Wrong attitude. It seems that, at this time in history, we have more tools at our disposal than ever before to avoid war. We have more capacity to organize and communicate now. Why should we continue to just assume that war is inevitable? I'm sure people had the same attitude toward the black plague in the middle ages. They probably thought "Oh well! All this bad air and holy wrath is inevitable. No way to avoid the plague!"
    - airstrike 9y ago
      War has never existed due to a lack of tools or technology. If anything, those things made war more deadly than ever (see WW1). Wars exist because people are willing to kill and die for what they believe in. As Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means”
    - MikkoFinell 9y ago
      You're right about everything. But consider ISIS, what kind of communication should we perform that will make future groups like that stop beheading people and raping children? There are situations where violence unfortunately is the only option left, and in that case you will want it to be as targeted and clean as possible to avoid collateral damage. Currently drone strikes is the best tech for that purpose, and we have an incentive to make it better for the reasons previously mentioned.
      - opportune 9y ago
        If the US only were using drones against ISIS then that would be a different story. The fact of the matter is that the US uses drones on much less morally cut-and-dry groups than ISIS, and will likely continue to do so in the future. It's like if a farmer wanted you to make them a shotgun so they could kill the wolves terrorizing their flock but you knew they were also going to use that shotgun to rob their neighbor for oil
        olleromam91 9y ago
        I see your analogy. But it's not totally perfect, because in a (hopefully functioning) democracy, the farmer can be told what to do by his constituents. Obviously this doesn't always happen, but do we trust the entity we voted for (USA.gov), or the one that makes money off our existence (google.com). I don't always know.
- drak0n1c 9y ago
  Symmetrical war isn't a good thing either, it's far worse - death tolls are much higher for both sides and wars last longer. See WW1. Sure, question why and when war is necessary - but when a war needs to be fought I don't think making war more symmetrical would be appreciated by anyone and result in less "coming back to bite us in the ass".
  - fineline 9y ago
    WW1 lasted from 1914-1918. The "war on terror" began in 2001 and is still ongoing in 2018, and its capacity to bite us in the ass seems undiminished.
- khawkins 9y ago
  But now you're arguing that we need to kill more innocents in order to drum up support for political change. That's cutting off your own nose to spite your face. Drone strikes aren't going away, especially since there is widespread support among the American public for them (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-ceo-pentagon-project.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-...). Thus, we should pursue both fronts: making drone strikes more safe, but also informing the public about the potential shortfalls and dangers of using such technologies. The idea that making technology more sophisticated will inevitably increase its usage is a fallacy. Nuclear weapons technology improved substantially over the 20th century, and yet it still hasn't been used since 1945.
rexpop 9y ago
Maybe if they stopped the program they would kill less people.
3131s 9y ago
Does a more accurate weapon really kill fewer people in every case? Even if the US government doesn't misuse it, the technology can always be sold to or hacked by some third party. It's also possible that when a weapon is deemed technically capable, people will be more comfortable with broad use of weapons and with expanding lists of individuals targeted for extrajudicial killing.
sabmalik 9y ago
So by that definition, it would be great to sell this technology to the "enemy" as well because then they could kill fewer people.
solatic 9y ago
Exactly this. So many people in this thread seem to be entirely ignorant of the effect that technology plays in munitions. People seem to look at atomic munitions and think "oh the role of technology is to build bigger weapons that can kill more people." This is an extremely narrow section of munitions research and almost intentionally myopic. You do not need advanced technology to build simple rockets with simple warheads and wreak havoc. These rockets are guided by nothing better than pointing and shooting. We see this in use in various paramilitaries around the world with little concern for civilian casualties: in Gaza, in Syria, in South Lebanon, in Yemen. If the West was similarly limited to such crude munitions then the civilian cost to destroying legitimate military targets would be enormous. Better guided munitions reduce civilian casualties and as such working on making munitions better-guided is indeed ethical. If you think that not giving generals the tools to better avoid civilian casualties means they will simply not wage war in ways that endanger civilians, well history is pretty clear that this is quite erroneous. Giving generals the tools to wage war more ethically allows them to make decisions with fewer compromises e.g. civilian casualties. This is not even to mention work on purely defensive munitions, e.g. Iron Dome, which is inherently ethical. And if your opposition is rooted in a sense of pacifism, please, freedom is not free, it's not just a slogan. Anarchies (i.e. the lack of a sovereign government with a military defending territory) and their power vacuums result in warlords and the end of civil society. And that Malthusian outcome is clearly less ethical than almost any other. That's just human nature. Defense of civil society requires a military. Ideally, that military will act as ethically as possible while achieving its primary goal which is the stability (in face of external threats) necessary for civil society to flourish. There are two ways to make the military ethical: a) give it ethical tools so that it won't be forced to use less ethical means for achieving its raison d'être, b) set ethical policy. As sad that it may be that we have little control over the latter, as engineers we can have control over the former.

Maybe if they're more accurate the marginal cost of killing people in other parts of the world will go down even more so we'll be even less likely to reflect on whether the fact we can easily use robots to kill people on the other side of the world who have no way of responding symmetrically might come back to bite us in the ass?

jimmaswell 9y ago
I don't think the marginal cost of these things has been that much of a consideration in the past. Less American military personnel will be put in harm's way as technology like this advances. Maybe wars will even be mostly unmanned remotely controlled machine-vs-machine in the future.
- tclancy 9y ago
  I was using that phrase a little loosely to mean "Fewer American soldiers being hurt or killed".
airstrike 9y ago
Nobody cares how many dimes those drones cost. War isn’t fought using the cheapest means available, but the most effective. Have you seen the size of the U.S. military budget? This country will continue to meddle in international affairs and, on occasion, get involved in bloody battles. Such is life. War is an integral part of our civilization and will continue to be so for the foreseeable future. You can’t just wish it away.
- tclancy 9y ago
  I feel like this would all be a little more interesting coming from a different username.
  - nbar1 9y ago
    The point is certainly valid. If Google steps out of this, they are just going to find someone to fill those shoes.
    - tclancy 9y ago
      No, that's simply not true. Lots of things were "Just how things are" until enough people stood up and said "No". Googles' employees are actually using their privilege to try to make a high-profile stand. No idea if it will make a difference, but it is far better than not trying.
  - airstrike 9y ago
    For what is worth my nickname is from the Sigur Ros song Vidrar vel til loftarasa...
    - tclancy 9y ago
      Ha, that's awesome!
- davesque 9y ago
  Wrong attitude. It seems that, at this time in history, we have more tools at our disposal than ever before to avoid war. We have more capacity to organize and communicate now. Why should we continue to just assume that war is inevitable? I'm sure people had the same attitude toward the black plague in the middle ages. They probably thought "Oh well! All this bad air and holy wrath is inevitable. No way to avoid the plague!"
  - airstrike 9y ago
    War has never existed due to a lack of tools or technology. If anything, those things made war more deadly than ever (see WW1). Wars exist because people are willing to kill and die for what they believe in. As Carl von Clausewitz wrote, “War is simply the continuation of political intercourse with the addition of other means”
  - MikkoFinell 9y ago
    You're right about everything. But consider ISIS, what kind of communication should we perform that will make future groups like that stop beheading people and raping children? There are situations where violence unfortunately is the only option left, and in that case you will want it to be as targeted and clean as possible to avoid collateral damage. Currently drone strikes is the best tech for that purpose, and we have an incentive to make it better for the reasons previously mentioned.
    - opportune 9y ago
      If the US only were using drones against ISIS then that would be a different story. The fact of the matter is that the US uses drones on much less morally cut-and-dry groups than ISIS, and will likely continue to do so in the future. It's like if a farmer wanted you to make them a shotgun so they could kill the wolves terrorizing their flock but you knew they were also going to use that shotgun to rob their neighbor for oil
      - olleromam91 9y ago
        I see your analogy. But it's not totally perfect, because in a (hopefully functioning) democracy, the farmer can be told what to do by his constituents. Obviously this doesn't always happen, but do we trust the entity we voted for (USA.gov), or the one that makes money off our existence (google.com). I don't always know.
drak0n1c 9y ago
Symmetrical war isn't a good thing either, it's far worse - death tolls are much higher for both sides and wars last longer. See WW1. Sure, question why and when war is necessary - but when a war needs to be fought I don't think making war more symmetrical would be appreciated by anyone and result in less "coming back to bite us in the ass".
- fineline 9y ago
  WW1 lasted from 1914-1918. The "war on terror" began in 2001 and is still ongoing in 2018, and its capacity to bite us in the ass seems undiminished.
khawkins 9y ago
But now you're arguing that we need to kill more innocents in order to drum up support for political change. That's cutting off your own nose to spite your face. Drone strikes aren't going away, especially since there is widespread support among the American public for them (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-ceo-pentagon-project.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-...). Thus, we should pursue both fronts: making drone strikes more safe, but also informing the public about the potential shortfalls and dangers of using such technologies. The idea that making technology more sophisticated will inevitably increase its usage is a fallacy. Nuclear weapons technology improved substantially over the 20th century, and yet it still hasn't been used since 1945.

rexpop 9y ago

Maybe if they stopped the program they would kill less people.

3131s 9y ago

Does a more accurate weapon really kill fewer people in every case? Even if the US government doesn't misuse it, the technology can always be sold to or hacked by some third party. It's also possible that when a weapon is deemed technically capable, people will be more comfortable with broad use of weapons and with expanding lists of individuals targeted for extrajudicial killing.

sabmalik 9y ago

So by that definition, it would be great to sell this technology to the "enemy" as well because then they could kill fewer people.

solatic 9y ago

Exactly this. So many people in this thread seem to be entirely ignorant of the effect that technology plays in munitions. People seem to look at atomic munitions and think "oh the role of technology is to build bigger weapons that can kill more people." This is an extremely narrow section of munitions research and almost intentionally myopic. You do not need advanced technology to build simple rockets with simple warheads and wreak havoc. These rockets are guided by nothing better than pointing and shooting. We see this in use in various paramilitaries around the world with little concern for civilian casualties: in Gaza, in Syria, in South Lebanon, in Yemen. If the West was similarly limited to such crude munitions then the civilian cost to destroying legitimate military targets would be enormous. Better guided munitions reduce civilian casualties and as such working on making munitions better-guided is indeed ethical. If you think that not giving generals the tools to better avoid civilian casualties means they will simply not wage war in ways that endanger civilians, well history is pretty clear that this is quite erroneous. Giving generals the tools to wage war more ethically allows them to make decisions with fewer compromises e.g. civilian casualties. This is not even to mention work on purely defensive munitions, e.g. Iron Dome, which is inherently ethical. And if your opposition is rooted in a sense of pacifism, please, freedom is not free, it's not just a slogan. Anarchies (i.e. the lack of a sovereign government with a military defending territory) and their power vacuums result in warlords and the end of civil society. And that Malthusian outcome is clearly less ethical than almost any other. That's just human nature. Defense of civil society requires a military. Ideally, that military will act as ethically as possible while achieving its primary goal which is the stability (in face of external threats) necessary for civil society to flourish. There are two ways to make the military ethical: a) give it ethical tools so that it won't be forced to use less ethical means for achieving its raison d'être, b) set ethical policy. As sad that it may be that we have little control over the latter, as engineers we can have control over the former.