776
The Pentagon is moving toward letting AI weapons autonomously decide to kill humans
(www.businessinsider.com)
this post was submitted on 25 Nov 2023
776 points (96.7% liked)
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Unless the operator decides hitting exactly those targets fits their strategy and they can blame a software bug.
And then when they go looking for that bug and find the logs showing that the operator overrode the safeties instead, they know exactly who is responsible for blowing up those ambulances.
And if the operator was commanded to do it? And to delete the logs? How naive are you that this is somehow makes war more humane?
Each additional safeguard makes it harder and adds another name to the eventual war crimes trial. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good, especially when it comes to reducing the number of ambulances that get blown up in war zones.
It doesn't work like that though. Western (backed) military can do and does that unpunished.
Here is a sample of US drone killing civilians
Israeli general: Captain, were you responsible for reprogramming the drones to bomb those ambulances?
Israeli captain: Yes, sir! Sorry, sir!
Israeli general: Captain, you're just the sort of man we need in this army.
Ah, evil people exist and therefore we should never develop technology that evil people could use for evil. Right.
Seems like a good reason not to develop technology to me. See also: biological weapons.
Those weapons come out of developments in medicine. Technology itself is not good or evil, it can be used for good or for evil. If you decide not to develop technology you're depriving the good of it as well. My point earlier is to show that there are good uses for these things.
Hmm... so maybe we keep developing medicine but not as a weapon and we keep developing AI but not as a weapon.
Or can you explain why one should be restricted from weapons development and not the other?
I disagree with your premise here. Taking a life is a serious step. A machine that unilaterally decides to kill some people with no recourse to human input has no good application.
It's like inventing a new biological weapon.
By not creating it, you are not depriving any decent person of anything that is actually good.