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What action can actually be taken towards that goal? Your own country can avoid creating these robots. But you can't know that any other country isn't pursuing

by syrrim 5y ago

What action can actually be taken towards that goal? Your own country can avoid creating these robots. But you can't know that any other country isn't pursuing them. Even if you could, the political capacity to sanction them for it is quite limited. So the most likely outcome of trying to ban them is that every country assumes every other country is still building them in secret, and thus every country still builds them in secret. Eventually, the fact that they are building them in secret becomes public, and ultimately nothing is done about it. Having a world with killer robots in it is bad, but a world where your enemies have killer robots and you don't is far worse. The decision makers will all be very cognizant of that fact.

PontifexMinimus 5y ago
> But you can't know that any other country isn't pursuing them. Indeed, what would happen is that if such a treaty was signed, some other countries would develop them anyway, as hidden modes for the use of their otherwise non-autonmous UAVs and UGVs. So any such treaty would essentially be handing the world to countries that cheat -- which would likely include Russia and China.
drekk 5y ago
This kind of reasoning is circular. It justifies any and all escalation on the chance that others are doing the same. Also baked into the assumption is that fire fights fire. I don't want my state to produce killer robots. Even if other states do. I can only impact my own. It's no secret that the US disproportionately engages in this "warfare" (read: asymmetrical slaughter) and even under a "liberal" head of state (Obama) civilian casualties of our drone program was 90%. You're also assuming regulating killer robots means a ban, when the international community could restrict deployments or justifiable uses. It's much more realistic even if rogue drones are created. The decision makers are duly elected representatives of their constituent body and it is beyond time they acted like it. Otherwise we're going to keep having more Vietnams, more Afghanistans, more pointless civilian death.
dmurray 5y ago
It's possible to be more cynical about this, but yet to come to a more optimistic conclusion. If the world's great military powers publicly swear off "killer drones" (let's assume we can meaningfully define such a thing), then they will continue to develop them in secret, but they won't use them in every little border skirmish: every Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or Crimea. They'll keep them for the big game. This has two good effects (assuming further development of killer drones is bad). Firstly, those of us unfortunate enough to be caught up in the horrendous bloody conflicts I callously described as "border skirmishes" won't additionally suffer from killer drone attacks. Secondly, development of the drones and the military doctrine surrounding them will be stymied: you can do a lot in the lab but any technology develops so much faster with the feedback loop that comes from using it in anger. Moreover, if there's a big war we're all screwed anyway. If that's your focus, you need to argue that drone availablity makes a big war more likely I'm not convinced that it does - making war cheap makes small war more likely, but all the decision makers know the cost of a big war. Edit: compare to anti-personnel landmines, or chemical weapons. Both of those see less use because of weapons bans. You might say no, they see less use because the great military powers no longer need them - but you're missing a step. The great powers no longer need them, they decry them as inhumane, they sign bans, and then (almost) everyone stops using them.
- PontifexMinimus 5y ago
  > The great powers no longer need them, they decry them as inhumane, they sign bans, and then (almost) everyone stops using them. See for example Bret Devereux: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
- User23 5y ago
  Kill-bots change the moral calculus too. As an example, it's one thing to rush a cop on the assumption that human cop won't just gun you down. It's another to rush a programmed kill-bot. The latter case is obviously just suicide, which is morally on the person committing it, not the tool they use to do it. I'm well aware there are many different ways besides the above one could argue it, but my key point is that automatons change the moral calculus, no matter what other premises you accept.

by syrrim 5y ago

PontifexMinimus 5y ago

> But you can't know that any other country isn't pursuing them. Indeed, what would happen is that if such a treaty was signed, some other countries would develop them anyway, as hidden modes for the use of their otherwise non-autonmous UAVs and UGVs. So any such treaty would essentially be handing the world to countries that cheat -- which would likely include Russia and China.

drekk 5y ago

This kind of reasoning is circular. It justifies any and all escalation on the chance that others are doing the same. Also baked into the assumption is that fire fights fire. I don't want my state to produce killer robots. Even if other states do. I can only impact my own. It's no secret that the US disproportionately engages in this "warfare" (read: asymmetrical slaughter) and even under a "liberal" head of state (Obama) civilian casualties of our drone program was 90%. You're also assuming regulating killer robots means a ban, when the international community could restrict deployments or justifiable uses. It's much more realistic even if rogue drones are created. The decision makers are duly elected representatives of their constituent body and it is beyond time they acted like it. Otherwise we're going to keep having more Vietnams, more Afghanistans, more pointless civilian death.

dmurray 5y ago

It's possible to be more cynical about this, but yet to come to a more optimistic conclusion. If the world's great military powers publicly swear off "killer drones" (let's assume we can meaningfully define such a thing), then they will continue to develop them in secret, but they won't use them in every little border skirmish: every Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or Crimea. They'll keep them for the big game. This has two good effects (assuming further development of killer drones is bad). Firstly, those of us unfortunate enough to be caught up in the horrendous bloody conflicts I callously described as "border skirmishes" won't additionally suffer from killer drone attacks. Secondly, development of the drones and the military doctrine surrounding them will be stymied: you can do a lot in the lab but any technology develops so much faster with the feedback loop that comes from using it in anger. Moreover, if there's a big war we're all screwed anyway. If that's your focus, you need to argue that drone availablity makes a big war more likely I'm not convinced that it does - making war cheap makes small war more likely, but all the decision makers know the cost of a big war. Edit: compare to anti-personnel landmines, or chemical weapons. Both of those see less use because of weapons bans. You might say no, they see less use because the great military powers no longer need them - but you're missing a step. The great powers no longer need them, they decry them as inhumane, they sign bans, and then (almost) everyone stops using them.

PontifexMinimus 5y ago
> The great powers no longer need them, they decry them as inhumane, they sign bans, and then (almost) everyone stops using them. See for example Bret Devereux: https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-chemical-weapons-anymore/ https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-use-ch...
User23 5y ago
Kill-bots change the moral calculus too. As an example, it's one thing to rush a cop on the assumption that human cop won't just gun you down. It's another to rush a programmed kill-bot. The latter case is obviously just suicide, which is morally on the person committing it, not the tool they use to do it. I'm well aware there are many different ways besides the above one could argue it, but my key point is that automatons change the moral calculus, no matter what other premises you accept.