Ethical Killing Machines

ubermiester writes "The New York Times reports on research to develop autonomous battlefield robots that would 'behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans.' The researchers claim that these real-life terminators 'can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a result, no tendency to lash out in fear. They can be built without anger or recklessness ... and they can be made invulnerable to ... "scenario fulfillment," which causes people to absorb new information more easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas.' Based on a recent report stating that 'fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as insurgents,' this might not be all that dumb an idea."

I for one welcome...

...need I say more?

Do they run vista?

It takes a special set of skills to corrupt a single human being, it takes another set of skills, not that special, to corrupt an entire battalion of robots, that are all identical. Did I mention sharks with lasers?

Re:Do they run vista?

It takes a special set of skills to corrupt a single human being, it takes another set of skills, not that special, to corrupt an entire battalion of robots

Do you live in a society without Money?
Or women?
Or sports cars?
Or Fancy houses?
Or Gold?
Or "Change" posters?

As far as I know, my computers have never accepted a bribe, or made a power-grab.

Re:Do they run vista?

Ummm... it's not the computers you bribe, it's their programmers.

Re:Do they run vista?

Ummm... it's not the computers you bribe, it's their programmers.

AHA! So! How is this any different than humans?

Bribe a human to kill a person (or have their army kill a shitload of people).
Bribe a human to have their robot kill a person (or have their army of robots kill a shitload of people).

I think that the problem is people having misconceptions about robots. They're not sentient. They don't think. They only do what we tell them to. Sure there are horror stories about robots coming to life, but there are also horror stories about dead people coming to life, or cars coming to life.

We need to drop the term "robot".

Re:Do they run vista?

The fact that robots do exactly what you tell them to is precisely why they're dangerous. If you have 1 maniacal individual order a platoon of soldiers to slaughter a village, the individual human soldiers may refuse to follow the order. If that same individual has a platoon of robots instead, the villagers are dead as soon as the order is issued.

Re:Do they run vista?

The premise of the article is that these robots are incorruptible. However such a premise is flawed at it's very core.

Because such robots will be designed, programed and manufactured, by man, who is corruptible.

The point of what pwnies was saying is that the ability to alter and subvert a piece of computer programming is a skill set that is highly prevalent in today's society.

Re:I for one welcome...

...need I say more?

Yes! It's ambiguous as is. Which were you going to go with?

1. Our ethical killer-robot overlords
2. Our more-benevolent-than-a-human killing machinev overlords
3. The impending terminator/matrix/MD geist/1000 other sci-fi themed apocalypse
4. Users who are new to /. who aren't Simpsons fans and don't get this joke
5. Our new ant overlords, since there is no stopping them even with our new murder-bots

Interesting...

I was just watching the into to the first "Tomb Raider" movie, where Lara destroys "Simon" (the killer robot that she uses for morning warmup) Robots... I must say, I don't like the idea behind robots fighting our wars, because that means that "acceptable risks" become a thing of the part, and we are Far more likely to "militarily intervene". Aka: "Less risk to our troops" can translate into "we go into more wars" which is something I don't support... wars benefit companies, and lead to the death of thousands. If the lives lost aren't American Lives, does it still matter? in my opinion, YES.

Parent is wrong!

"Less risk to our troops" can translate into "we go into more wars"

You don't like wars because people are killed. You're talking about potentially eliminating human casualties in any war.

No he's not. He's talking about this:

1. The USA having robots and Bumfukistan having people.
2. Because the USA has robots and won't suffer (nearly any) casualties, they enter into more wars.
3. Because they enter into more wars, more Bumfukistanis will get killed.
4. The increase in the Bumfukistani body count is greater than the decrease in the USA body count.

Robot wars (heh...) may lead to more lives lost on the battlefields. That's what parent is worried about.

If the lives lost aren't American Lives, does it still matter?

If this question seriously needs to be asked, this world is fucked.

Oblig. Simpsons quote

From The Secret War of Lisa Simpson [wikipedia.org]

The wars of the future will not be fought on the battlefield or at sea. They will be fought in space, or possibly on top of a very tall mountain. In either case, most of the actual fighting will be done by small robots. And as you go forth today remember always your duty is clear: To build and maintain those robots

Humane wars

Automated killing machines were banned at the Geneva convention. This is generally a good thing when we're sending real, live humans (versus the walking undead) to fight our wars. It would be completely inhumane (haha) and tilt the outcome of a war towards those who can afford to develop such technology. That is, if one country can afford killer robots and another can't, then the former has no deterrent to invading the latter.

But imagine if all wars were fought by proxy. Instead of sending people, we send machines. Let the machines battle it out. To be really civil we should also limit the power and effectiveness of our killer robots, and the number of machines that can enter the battlefield at once. Of course, at some point every country will be able to build to the maximum effective specification. At that point it will be a battle of strategy. The next obvious step is to do away with the machines entirely and just get a chessboard.

Whoever wins gets declared the winner.

Makes perfect sense.

Thanks for reading,
M B Dyson

CyberDyne Systems

Ethics, or battle tactics?

Personally, I think this is a response to the problems of being the established army fighting a guerrilla force. The way guerrillas succeed is by driving the invading army slowly crazy by making them live in constant fear (out of self-preservation), until they start lashing out in fear (killing innocents, and recruiting new guerrillas in mass). The same goes for treating noncombatants with dignity and respect: Doing so makes the occupying force less hated, so the noncombatants won't be as willing to support the guerrillas.

So in short, to me this sounds like trying to win, not ethics.

Clippy?

I see you're trying to attack an insurgent stronghold.
Would you like me to:
1. Call in airstrike
2. Fire machinegun
3. Wave white flag

Their one weakness

They'll be a cinch to defeat. You see, Killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, we can send wave after wave of our own men at them, until they reach their limit and shutdown.

-Zapp Branigan

150 year-old wisdom

"Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster"--William Tecumseh Sherman

Ahem...

I take serious issue with the part of the article where they mention that most Marines who toured Iraq believe that all civilians should be treated as insurgents. Of course you treat everyone like potential insurgents in an urban combat environment, otherwise you will end up dead. That says nothing about ethical views or the proper treatment of people in general. SWAT teams are taught to consider everyone as a terrorist when they are attempting hostage rescue. That means, that they never take for granted that the apparent "hostage" is indeed a hostage. It keeps people safe.

Re:Ethical vs Moral

Ethics" is such a poorly defined term...hell, different cultures have different definitions of the term. In feudal Japan, it was ethical to give your opponent the chance for suicide...today, many Westerners would in fact argue the opposite: the ethical thing to do is prevent a human from committing suicide as that's seen as a symptom of mental illness.

I've always defined "morality" as the way one treats oneself and "ethics" as the way one treats others. It's possible to be ethical without being moral--for example, I'd consider a person who spends thousands of dollars on charity just to get laid to be acting ethically but immorally. By that definition, the hullabaloo at Guantanamo would certainly be both immoral and unethical--not only were they treated inhumanely, but it was done against international law and against the so-called "rules of war".

These robots would have to be programmed with certain specific directives: for example, "Don't take any actions which may harm civilians", "take actions against captured enemy soldiers which would cause the least amount of forseeable pain", etc. Is this good? Could be...soldiers tend to have things like rage, fear, and paranoia. But it could lead to glitches too....I wouldn't want to be on the battlefield with the 1.0 version. Something like Asimov's 3 Laws would have to be constructed, some guiding principle...the difficulty will be ironing out all the loopholes.

Re:Ethical vs Moral

The advantage to a killing robot is that it has no emotions. The disadvantage to a killing robot is ironically that it has no emotions.

More than not, most face to face civilian casualties on the battlefield happen due to fatigue, emotional related issues (my buddy just died!), or miscommunication.

Not because the soldiers had lack of emotion or humanity.

The other kind in which a bomb, mortar, or arty shell lands on a house full of civilians because someone typed in the wrong address in GPS are so separated from the battlefield anyway, it won't really make a difference if the guy pushing the button is man or machine.

Re:Ethical vs Moral

The bigger issue isn't so much the tools and weapons, but the whole "modern" concept of war. You cannot accept the concept of war without the concept of causing destruction, even destruction of humans. To send people into a warzone and tell them not to cause destruction is actually more immoral and unethical, in my mind, than sending them in and allowing them to cause destruction.

Re:Ethical vs Moral

Sorry McGrew, but waterboarding and torture is both unethical and immoral. As far as I know (being an ignorant foreigner), the US Army does not include any torture instructions in its manuals.

Now, you could make a case that Gitmo's existence might be ethical but immoral, considering that it is technically not a US territory, but legally* under US jurisdiction.

*The legality of this is disputed by Cuba, of course...

Re:And a toddler wanders into your field of fire.

That is less a question of ethics and more one of stupidity.

Re:Ethical vs Moral

Actually (according to every philosophy book i've ever read), morals are codes of conduct, and ethics are is more ethereal "right and wrong" concept. The problem is that 'ethics' has been watered down to mean 'morals' because 'business ethics', etc. roll off the tongue more easily than 'business morals'.

Re:Ethical vs Moral

Something that can't be unethical or ethical is probably going to be more ethical than something that is unethical. In other words, if robots are neutral and humans are either evil or good, neutral is more good than evil.

It depends on if they are lawful neutral, chaotic neutral, or true neutral.

Re:Silly nonsense

The only ethics needed or desired on the battlefield is to win the day. Period. Doing anything else is a formula for disaster. As can be shown in Vietnam. We didn't use the maximum force to full effect, we danced around and tried to do everything but defeat the enemy. The result - South Vietnam was overrun and lots of people died.

No, that's absurd. Who cares if you win the day if you lose the war? If you get bogged down in that kind of short-term thinking you're doomed to lose in the end.

We didn't win in Vietnam because the Vietnamese were willing to take horrific casualties, not because we weren't willing to attack with maximum force. Hell, we firebombed villages and deforested entire regions, what exactly else should we have done?