41–50 of 55 posts
I would be more impressed if their opponent were more technically sophisticated. You have people pretending to build a tank on one hand and people with automated robots on the other? Seems a bit overkill and pointless IMHO.
There may be inconvenient and/or political repercussions - but those can be worked around by further magnifying the power imbalance. (Yes, I'm a cynic.)
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That's not what's going to happen. One side will have robots, the other will have humans. This is already happening.
Already, in the case of Israel vs. Palestinian resistance, we're talking teenagers throwing rocks and people firing WW2-class rocket artillery, versus one of the most high-tech and well-funded armies (with very good, uncontested air support) in the world. With robots involved it would most definitely be a one-sided reduction in casualties, but it already is so one-sided I'm not sure that it would meaningfully alter t…
There is little doubt that if stabbings, rocket attacks etc stopped Israel would stop as well.
... and, there is also little reason for doubt that if Israel stopped first it wouldn't stop attacks against them, quite on the contrary there is reason to believe they would escalate if left alone.
PS: while I feel this was worth mentioning I was not the one to downvote you, I think you argued reasonably.
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Weapons that autonomously decide when to explode have existed since WW2 with radar proximity fuses and modern guided weapons can select targets (e.g. "fire and forget" Brimstone missiles). Where do we draw the dividing line?
Well in that case the weapons autonomously decided how to inflict maximum damage on the target. Which generally nobody has a problem with. There was still a human that chose the target, and a human that chose to fire on the target.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brimstone_(missile)
This kind of ability to pick specific targets has been around for a while - e.g. SADARM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Destroy_ARMor
Edit: Of course someone decides to fire these things, but isn't that similar to someone deciding to unleash an autonomous fighting system?
Edit2: And what about mines?
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"Overkill" is the defining feature of Western military. We've got to the point where we consider a ratio of 1 (of ours) : 1000 (of theirs) unacceptable. It's very hard to present an argument that says we should accept more deaths on our own side in order to be "fairer" to the other side. However, the net effect is that we continue to minimize our risk in ways that de-humanize conflict and increase collateral damage.
I'm not sure we are really increasing collateral damage, relative to where we started 100 years ago. The days of firing 1-3 million heavy artillery shells in a day[1] are past, as are the days of dropping tens of thousands of tons of bombs indiscriminantly on a city[2]. Blowing up a single house with a drone-launched missile, or taking out a bridge with a single laser-guided bomb is far more surgical. One can imagine…
It's not just about fighting terrorists. We don't know who will be in command next. Giving this tech into the wrong hands will do some massive damages. There is always a chance to find ourselves on the wrong end of the drone.
Also the drone targets a single house, bombs it to oblivion and then someone says they are 80% sure, they bombed the right house with the right people in them. Not to mention a lot of times the people killed are civilians who were actually supportive, but because they are dead now, we just make the rest angry and make them side with the enemy.
We are a long way away making sure we are killing the right target.
I wonder what the cost differential between The Trump Wall, and autonomous vehicle patrols would be. Electric vehicles with solar charging would be very cost-effective as a border security mechanism. Where are all the border security startups? Lots of government cash on the table I would think.
A wall, doesn't need electricity.
The maintenance cost is lower.
Can't be hacked.
Oh, and you can paint nice big pictures on it.
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Can't we just get a kind of programmer's Hippocratic oath going here? Let's just all not facilitate autonomous shooting. I know both sides of the argument. I know it won't prevent it being done. I just mean if enough people agreed not to do it, then we'd at least generate enough disapproval for it not to be the subject of any PR Puff.
Isn't it better to have robots fighting and dying than humans? War sucks, and I do wish that we could have world peace. But if war is going to happen, I'd rather it be robots that are the ones in harm's way.
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I assume that these devices will mainly being deployed against enemies not having those. Main advantage: no chance of mercy. Extremely valuable in civil wars...
Do note that the robots described in this article only drive autonomously, and when armed, need a human to (remotely) fire the weapons. If the robot shot autonomously, you'd have a point about mercy. But the way it is described here, it's exactly the same mercy-wise as if the soldier manning the weapons was riding along in the vehicle.
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Well in that case the weapons autonomously decided how to inflict maximum damage on the target. Which generally nobody has a problem with. There was still a human that chose the target, and a human that chose to fire on the target.
Brimstone can select its own targets: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brimstone_(missile) This kind of ability to pick specific targets has been around for a while - e.g. SADARM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sense_and_Destroy_ARMor Edit: Of course someone decides to fire these things, but isn't that similar to someone deciding to unleash an autonomous fighting system? Edit2: And what about mines?
But I would say that deciding to fire an autonomous missile in a hostile environment is not the same as deciding to unleash an autonomous fighting system.
In the first case, a human decides to unleash the autonomous missile once during a single event. Whereas in the second case, you are unleashing a system that decides for itself when to fire for every situation it is placed in. The second system is placed in many kill/no-kill situations and might not have enough discernment to realize that in this one special case the person in front of it is not hostile even though it is in a conflict zone.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Already, in the case of Israel vs. Palestinian resistance, we're talking teenagers throwing rocks and people firing WW2-class rocket artillery, versus one of the most high-tech and well-funded armies (with very good, uncontested air support) in the world. With robots involved it would most definitely be a one-sided reduction in casualties, but it already is so one-sided I'm not sure that it would meaningfully alter t…
Worth mentioning: the side that has the biggest causualities is the one who keeps attacking first. The only reason why more Israelis aren't hurt seems to be that they put a lot of effort into shielding their civilians. There is little doubt that if stabbings, rocket attacks etc stopped Israel would stop as well. ... and, there is also little reason for doubt that if Israel stopped first it wouldn't stop attacks again…
Every violent action by both sides is framed as a retaliation for previous wrongs.
It's almost impossible to prove conclusively who started the tit for tat in almost all cases. However, if you do an analysis of most media stories or news reports in the US, there's a curious degree of unanimity about it.
Dismissing the proportionality of the responses (which you can measure) in favor of focusing of "who started it?" (which you can't), is effectively prioritizing propaganda over facts.
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That's better than both sides being humans. Seriously. Incremental improvements are worthwhile. In general, militaries never want to comprise their effectiveness. So if given the chance to implement a life-saving intervention that harms their effectiveness, they will be reluctant at best to implement it. But this is a life-saving intervention that possibly even increases their effectiveness! That's what truly makes i…
That's a best case scenario. What it could do is make military intervention an even easier decision. The loss of human life is a deterrent to engaging in war. If one side isn't concerned about that, wouldn't they be more inclined to go to war?
Drone operators refer to children as “fun-size terrorists” and liken killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” said one of the operators, Michael Haas, a former senior airman in the Air Force
https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators-s...