7 ms·

Autonomous Weapons Need Autonomous Lawyers

62 points by mhb 7y ago

paultopia 7y ago
This is interesting, but there are difficult conceptual problems with imagining that supervised learning can just be plunked into legal reasoning. I have a draft chapter on this, if folks are curious (or have feedback!): https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv/gk2ms https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv/gk2ms
yboris 7y ago
Or better yet, autonomous weapons need to be prevented: https://www.stopkillerrobots.org https://www.stopkillerrobots.org
- cooljacob204 7y ago
  Unfortunately that is impossible as much as I wish it was possible. Russia, US and China will never risk falling behind in the field. Maybe we are about to hit the great filter...
  - wayoutthere 7y ago
    It would also be trivial to build one; you can find plenty of homebuilds for airsoft versions of autonomous weapons from the last decade or so. Pretty sure the day the terrorists (specifically the domestic ones) start building this kind of crap is the day public spaces stop being a thing.
    - jstanley 7y ago
      The reason public spaces are safe is not because it's hard to randomly kill people in public spaces, but because most people don't want to randomly kill people in public spaces. This is unlikely to change much, even as autonomous weapons get easier and cheaper to make.
      - Teever 7y ago
        That's not correct. The reason public spaces are safe is because it's hard to randomly kill people in public spaces and get away with it While you are correct that most people don't want to randomly kill people in public spaces a non trivial amount of people do. It's only the thin slice of that small group that want to kill people and don't care if they live after that we've had to worry about to date, and we see them in the form of suicide bombers or that Las Vegas shooter from last year. We will have much bigger problems when it's possible for people to kill large swathes of innocent people and have a high probability of getting away with it.
        imtringued 7y ago
        >We will have much bigger problems when it's possible for people to kill large swathes of innocent people and have a high probability of getting away with it. You have just described every war and oppressive dictatorship in human history.
        Teever 7y ago
        In case it wasn't obvious from my comment when I used the term 'people' there I was referring to individual non-state actors. A drone or a drone swarm is an incredible force multiplier that will allow individuals to commit atrocities and have a significant chance of not getting caught which will make enforcement and prevention exceedingly difficult if not impossible.
      - anigbrowl 7y ago
        Sure...in peacetime.
    - throwaway744678 7y ago
      The limitting factor of terrorists attacks is not the lack of young men willing to die perpetrating them.
  - Bombthecat 7y ago
    I think we did already. It will just take time to materialize .
  - chris5745 7y ago
    It’s not impossible. We always have a choice.
    - cooljacob204 7y ago
      It's naive to say that. We as individuals do, but you cannot control every individual in the world effectively. It's best to assume that it will happen and try to put safeguards in effect.
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      But I can't choose for you and vice versa. Agreements and treaties do a good job but a cursory reading of history indicates that they can also be violated.
fwip 7y ago
How dystopian - our murderbots will be held accountable by our lawyerbots.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Horrifying.
- NTDF9 7y ago
  All we need now is a simulation to plug ourselves into. And this is how The Matrix was made.
- nostrademons 7y ago
  It's sorta like AdTech, where machines carefully optimize the ads shown to other machines and blocked by humans, with each layer charging humans for the privilege.
  - cameronbrown 7y ago
    Most humans don't block ads though.
- asdfman123 7y ago
  Then the lawyerbots will start moving too fast, too, so we'll need laws written and approved by congressbots. You know, maybe the Unabomber had a point there...
cameronbrown 7y ago
If we can't keep up with our killing machine's actions, maybe we shouldn't have them?
nexuist 7y ago
There is a bit of a positive side to this - if our side uses murderbots, and their side uses murderbots...why bother with humans? I hope, far in the future but not too far, wars are held among the stars with remotely operated or even autonomous starships battling over resources such as meteors or comets. It is in every nation state’s best interest to reduce the human and property cost of every battle. The need for conflict will likely be forever a part of humanity. The need for death or injury, however, is quickly withering away.
- inetknght 7y ago
  You don't see a situation where one side can mass produce bots and completely dominate (zerg...)? Such a side would likely also force the losing side into slavery or starvation
- robotresearcher 7y ago
  The side that can destroy the opponent’s ability to build, deploy, and develop murderbots will have a big advantage. So they will target the murderbot economy and harm people in the process.
  - bilbo0s 7y ago
    >So they will target the murderbot economy and harm people in the process. Yeah, you can kind of see the escalation tree. Inevitably, there's a point at which some book smart people come up with the idea to use AI techniques to have the murderbots protect their own reproduction capacity. I hope everyone who decides to manufacture murderbots is wise enough to keep an "Off" switch of some sort.
- ptah 7y ago
  why not just do it in a video game instead
- mLuby 7y ago
  Furthermore, while human life was "nasty, brutish and short" dying "in a blaze of glory" made some sense, trading just a few years. But as we live longer and and happier lives, that trade will be viewed as pathologically short-sighted.
ajnin 7y ago
I disagree with the premise. There are no autonomous robots on their own, there are autonomous robots that someone decided to deploy and target on something. That's just too easy to say that oh, the robots are autonomous so nobody's really responsible for them. "Only robots can judge other robots" ... no, humans judge the actions of other humans. If we don't hold the decision-makers accountable, the descent towards global totalitarian rule seems inevitable.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
bloody-crow 7y ago
Interestingly enough, dangerous technology has a negative bias towards morality, meaning that an actor less concerned with moral aspects of advancing such technology incurs less resistance in doing so. If US military succumbs to public pressure and stops developing autonomous weapons (purely hypothetical, never gonna happen), Russia or China will not, and we end up in a situation where the least moral actor has the most powerful and advanced drones. There's a similar situation in eugenics/genetics and other morally dubious research areas.
alottafunchata 7y ago
Man, the references to AWS threw me off

62 points by mhb 7y ago

This is interesting, but there are difficult conceptual problems with imagining that supervised learning can just be plunked into legal reasoning. I have a draft chapter on this, if folks are curious (or have feedback!): https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv/gk2ms https://osf.io/preprints/lawarxiv/gk2ms

yboris 7y ago

Or better yet, autonomous weapons need to be prevented: https://www.stopkillerrobots.org https://www.stopkillerrobots.org

cooljacob204 7y ago
Unfortunately that is impossible as much as I wish it was possible. Russia, US and China will never risk falling behind in the field. Maybe we are about to hit the great filter...
- wayoutthere 7y ago
  It would also be trivial to build one; you can find plenty of homebuilds for airsoft versions of autonomous weapons from the last decade or so. Pretty sure the day the terrorists (specifically the domestic ones) start building this kind of crap is the day public spaces stop being a thing.
  - jstanley 7y ago
    The reason public spaces are safe is not because it's hard to randomly kill people in public spaces, but because most people don't want to randomly kill people in public spaces. This is unlikely to change much, even as autonomous weapons get easier and cheaper to make.
    - Teever 7y ago
      That's not correct. The reason public spaces are safe is because it's hard to randomly kill people in public spaces and get away with it While you are correct that most people don't want to randomly kill people in public spaces a non trivial amount of people do. It's only the thin slice of that small group that want to kill people and don't care if they live after that we've had to worry about to date, and we see them in the form of suicide bombers or that Las Vegas shooter from last year. We will have much bigger problems when it's possible for people to kill large swathes of innocent people and have a high probability of getting away with it.
      - imtringued 7y ago
        >We will have much bigger problems when it's possible for people to kill large swathes of innocent people and have a high probability of getting away with it. You have just described every war and oppressive dictatorship in human history.
        Teever 7y ago
        In case it wasn't obvious from my comment when I used the term 'people' there I was referring to individual non-state actors. A drone or a drone swarm is an incredible force multiplier that will allow individuals to commit atrocities and have a significant chance of not getting caught which will make enforcement and prevention exceedingly difficult if not impossible.
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      Sure...in peacetime.
  - throwaway744678 7y ago
    The limitting factor of terrorists attacks is not the lack of young men willing to die perpetrating them.
- Bombthecat 7y ago
  I think we did already. It will just take time to materialize .
- chris5745 7y ago
  It’s not impossible. We always have a choice.
  - cooljacob204 7y ago
    It's naive to say that. We as individuals do, but you cannot control every individual in the world effectively. It's best to assume that it will happen and try to put safeguards in effect.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    But I can't choose for you and vice versa. Agreements and treaties do a good job but a cursory reading of history indicates that they can also be violated.

fwip 7y ago

How dystopian - our murderbots will be held accountable by our lawyerbots.

cameronbrown 7y ago
Horrifying.
NTDF9 7y ago
All we need now is a simulation to plug ourselves into. And this is how The Matrix was made.
nostrademons 7y ago
It's sorta like AdTech, where machines carefully optimize the ads shown to other machines and blocked by humans, with each layer charging humans for the privilege.
- cameronbrown 7y ago
  Most humans don't block ads though.
asdfman123 7y ago
Then the lawyerbots will start moving too fast, too, so we'll need laws written and approved by congressbots. You know, maybe the Unabomber had a point there...

cameronbrown 7y ago

If we can't keep up with our killing machine's actions, maybe we shouldn't have them?

nexuist 7y ago

There is a bit of a positive side to this - if our side uses murderbots, and their side uses murderbots...why bother with humans? I hope, far in the future but not too far, wars are held among the stars with remotely operated or even autonomous starships battling over resources such as meteors or comets. It is in every nation state’s best interest to reduce the human and property cost of every battle. The need for conflict will likely be forever a part of humanity. The need for death or injury, however, is quickly withering away.

inetknght 7y ago
You don't see a situation where one side can mass produce bots and completely dominate (zerg...)? Such a side would likely also force the losing side into slavery or starvation
robotresearcher 7y ago
The side that can destroy the opponent’s ability to build, deploy, and develop murderbots will have a big advantage. So they will target the murderbot economy and harm people in the process.
- bilbo0s 7y ago
  >So they will target the murderbot economy and harm people in the process. Yeah, you can kind of see the escalation tree. Inevitably, there's a point at which some book smart people come up with the idea to use AI techniques to have the murderbots protect their own reproduction capacity. I hope everyone who decides to manufacture murderbots is wise enough to keep an "Off" switch of some sort.
ptah 7y ago
why not just do it in a video game instead
mLuby 7y ago
Furthermore, while human life was "nasty, brutish and short" dying "in a blaze of glory" made some sense, trading just a few years. But as we live longer and and happier lives, that trade will be viewed as pathologically short-sighted.

ajnin 7y ago

I disagree with the premise. There are no autonomous robots on their own, there are autonomous robots that someone decided to deploy and target on something. That's just too easy to say that oh, the robots are autonomous so nobody's really responsible for them. "Only robots can judge other robots" ... no, humans judge the actions of other humans. If we don't hold the decision-makers accountable, the descent towards global totalitarian rule seems inevitable.

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

bloody-crow 7y ago

Interestingly enough, dangerous technology has a negative bias towards morality, meaning that an actor less concerned with moral aspects of advancing such technology incurs less resistance in doing so. If US military succumbs to public pressure and stops developing autonomous weapons (purely hypothetical, never gonna happen), Russia or China will not, and we end up in a situation where the least moral actor has the most powerful and advanced drones. There's a similar situation in eugenics/genetics and other morally dubious research areas.

alottafunchata 7y ago

Man, the references to AWS threw me off