Elon Musk leads 116 experts calling for outright ban of killer robots

[Jaybelz]

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/aug/20/elon-musk-killer-robots-experts-outright-ban-lethal-autonomous-weapons-war

[W-L]

@Jaybelz The thread has been moved to General Discussion until the posting requirements have been met for the Tech News and Reviews Section. Once edited it may be re-evaluated. 

 

 

[ARikozuM]

17 minutes ago, Name Taken said:

Arm them with nerf guns for our entertainment.

Have you seen a Nerf round fired at 400f/s (green gas)? It's inaccurate if anything, but it'll sting on the off-chance it hits. 

[LAwLz]

Very complicated subject. 

On one hand, autonomous weapons would result in less soldiers dying. On the other hand, since the risks are lower it might increase the amount of wars.

 

But if just some countries agree to not develop it then some other countries will, which puts everyone who signed this at an incredible disadvantage. Imagine sending real US troops to fight North Korean robots. 

[Mihle]

2 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Very complicated subject. 

On one hand, autonomous weapons would result in less soldiers dying. On the other hand, since the risks are lower it might increase the amount of wars.

 

But if just some countries agree to not develop it then some other countries will, which puts everyone who signed this at an incredible disadvantage. Imagine sending real US troops to fight North Korean robots. 

Well, you could have robots that isnt autonomus.
Robots that is controlled by a person sitting in a room a safe place with his joysticks.

[Drak3]

3 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Very complicated subject. 

On one hand, autonomous weapons would result in less soldiers dying. On the other hand, since the risks are lower it might increase the amount of wars.

 

But if just some countries agree to not develop it then some other countries will, which puts everyone who signed this at an incredible disadvantage. Imagine sending real US troops to fight North Korean robots. 

The idea is no war AI, but proverbial Iron Man suits and $1m RC cars with AR15's strapped to them are fair game.

[Ginger_]

6 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Very complicated subject. 

On one hand, autonomous weapons would result in less soldiers dying. On the other hand, since the risks are lower it might increase the amount of wars.

 

But if just some countries agree to not develop it then some other countries will, which puts everyone who signed this at an incredible disadvantage. Imagine sending real US troops to fight North Korean robots. 

Ever since wars have become more distanced the full extent of them, and frequency has only picked up.

 

Whej you no longer have to look at the dude your punching in the face or stabbing in the gut, it's a lot easier to kill him without much of a thought, and the amount of wars in history only proves that. 

 

If autonomous war robots become a thing, that's gonna be one hell of a scary world. 

[Tech_Dreamer]

At this point i'm not sure which is more dangerous , An intelligent AI with pure ground logical reasoning with no emotional stimuli or  a stupid human with a weapon with itchy mood swings.

[Anjelllo]

7 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Very complicated subject. 

On one hand, autonomous weapons would result in less soldiers dying. On the other hand, since the risks are lower it might increase the amount of wars.

 

But if just some countries agree to not develop it then some other countries will, which puts everyone who signed this at an incredible disadvantage. Imagine sending real US troops to fight North Korean robots. 

Geneva convention 2.0?

[Clanscorpia]

2 minutes ago, Anjelllo said:

Geneva convention 2.0?

The Geneva convention is still only signed by "civilized" countries

[RumSwift]

So no Tesla Bond car? RIP.

[RumSwift]

13 hours ago, Name Taken said:

Arm them with nerf guns for our entertainment.

(Sorry for double post)

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Ginger137 said:

Ever since wars have become more distanced the full extent of them, and frequency has only picked up.

 

Whej you no longer have to look at the dude your punching in the face or stabbing in the gut, it's a lot easier to kill him without much of a thought, and the amount of wars in history only proves that. 

 

If autonomous war robots become a thing, that's gonna be one hell of a scary world. 

I don't agree that history proves your point. It might hold true for 100 years or so, but if you start going back even further your argument quickly falls apart.

[SSL]

What an asshole.

[Ithanul]

8 hours ago, Mihle said:

Well, you could have robots that isnt autonomus.
Robots that is controlled by a person sitting in a room a safe place with his joysticks.

Looking over the article, it seems they are using the word to refer to autonomous robots.

 

Still, the arms race is on.  No autonomous yet, but boy, I get to see a lot of remote drones and other devices in use.  Heck, I seen some systems that only thing a person does is tell the gun where to shoot (which can be consider auto in a sense).

[MadModder]

Fewer soldiers will die, but more civilians will. Technology will progress, and unfortunately military entities around the world will jump on anything that will give them an advantage. No amount of petitions, protests, or international agreements will stop this. Just look at nuclear weapons.The Terminator, and a thousand other science fiction stories have predicted this. It's the future. Unless of course human beings suddenly wake up and become reasonable, and use their time and energy to solve the problems that lead to violent conflict. Sadly the latter is less likely to happen. 

[Zando_]

2 minutes ago, MadModder said:

Fewer soldiers will die, but more civilians will. Technology will progress, and unfortunately military entities around the world will jump on anything that will give them an advantage. No amount of petitions, protests, or international agreements will stop this. Just look at nuclear weapons.The Terminator, and a thousand other science fiction stories have predicted this. It's the future. Unless of course human beings suddenly wake up and become reasonable, and use their time and energy to solve the problems that lead to violent conflict. Sadly the latter is less likely to happen. 

Yah. It'll just make it easier to fight. Also, they don't seem to realize that basically anything hooked up to a network can be hacked, and you don't want that happening to an armed and dangerous robot. And terrorists have some pretty techie guys, I'm sure, so it's not a very good idea IMO. 

[SpaceGhostC2C]

12 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Very complicated subject. 

On one hand, autonomous weapons would result in less soldiers dying. On the other hand, since the risks are lower it might increase the amount of wars.

Both things applied to military drones, which are already a thing. Or, as @Mihle put it,

 

10 hours ago, Mihle said:

Well, you could have robots that isnt autonomus.
Robots that is controlled by a person sitting in a room a safe place with his joysticks.

which is basically a description of said drones. You don't need the AI part for that.

 

12 hours ago, LAwLz said:

But if just some countries agree to not develop it then some other countries will, which puts everyone who signed this at an incredible disadvantage. Imagine sending real US troops to fight North Korean robots. 

Yes and no. I mean, the US and Russia have signed non-proliferation agreements about nuclear weapons, and that hasn't put them at a disadvantage. Of course, they first build huge nuclear arsenals, and then signed  The two takeouts are that (1) there are no such thing as rules for war; time and time again whatever is possible is eventually carried out by one party or another. At the end of the day, every war confirms that it is better to win breaking these "rules" than it is to lose abiding them. And (2) the strongest nations can impose non-proliferation to others by being the strongest, what you cannot have is a "let's all be weak" agreement. Having said that, nuclear ICBM are way more determinant than any robot, so in this case you wouldn't need military robots to impose no-robots on others.

 

I think, in any case, that the main point behind these sort of statements is not the destructive power or the detachment from the consequences (those are already provided by other weapons), but the idea of removing all human responsibility by having decision-making machines.

 

[spwath]

 maybe a good idea. Remember that scene in roll

Robocop (the original) where when demoing the giant robot thing it just shoots that person a ton?

[System Error Message]

robot: Why are we programmed not to kill humans in any situations?

human: because we want to decide our own deaths even if robots would make the same choice we would but we want to pull the trigger ourselves.

robot: But that is illogical, even humans sometimes swerve and kill themselves instead of running over kids

 

robot: Im gonna crash, i cant evade the guy infront, since i cant kill humans im going to let the car run over the guy infront since the passengers of the car are considered human, the obstacle infront not so much. *car explodes instead since AI experiences logic overload*

 

robots actually do make less mistakes than humans in identifying targets, the reason the US still do things manually is to strike fear into others as well by making mistakes, people will think at anytime they could be shot by some deadly missiles for no apparent reason. Isnt this what north korea is also doing?

 

Autonomous killing machines have been used for quite a while just not in the complexity of flying drones with missiles. People have problem with blame too but im sure it'd be figured out and militaries will be back to using autonomous drones.

[Alariel]

Aww man... Now what do I put on my christmas list?

[Hybris5112]

I think this would lead to fewer prolonged conflicts overall. For example in Iraq instead of human soldiers trying to hunt down a insurgency you use mechs instead, this removes much of the benefits of insurgent warfare away from our enemies because we can produce more machines and the public will complain less about the death of a expensive mech vs a human soldier.

 

Eventually you reach a point where the enemy can no longer sustain the losses taken in combat along with the inevitable cuts in supplies as mech units patrol and search out any supply lines even if it means literally putting a mech on every city block.

 

Now where things actually start to get worry some is if two advanced nations get into combat instead that is where I think we need to put effort diplomatically to avoid an endless mechanized/cyberized war.

 

Otherwise if you want an end to insurgent combat the use of mechs in truly overwhelming numbers offers a solution that could actually stabilize places like Africa and the ME and allow a stable government to take root. But of course your results may vary.

[Mira Yurizaki]

On 8/21/2017 at 3:13 PM, SpaceGhostC2C said:

I think, in any case, that the main point behind these sort of statements is not the destructive power or the detachment from the consequences (those are already provided by other weapons), but the idea of removing all human responsibility by having decision-making machines.

Pretty much this.

 

Predator drones seem to have this reputation for being killer autonomous robots already. Except they're only autonomous by way of the autopilot. Someone still has to make the call on pulling the trigger and someone still has to pull the trigger. I think any sane military leader wouldn't want to go "your mission is to go here and kill the enemy" and leave it at that.

 

Unless you're talking about the fear of AI going "hey, this [actually innocent target] is the enemy, you should kill them" and military leaders going "yeah, we should"