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posted by takyon on Monday March 11 2019, @04:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the killbots-and-cream dept.

The U.S. is seeking bids to improve its "basic" killbot to the the point where it can "acquire, identify, and engage targets at least 3X faster than the current manual process."

U.S. Army Assures Public That Robot Tank System Adheres to AI Murder Policy

Why does any of this matter? The Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, requires that humans be able to "exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force," meaning that the U.S. won't toss a fully autonomous robot into a battlefield and allow it to decide independently whether to kill someone. This safeguard is sometimes called being "in the loop," meaning that a human is making the final decision about whether to kill someone.

Industry Day for the Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (ATLAS) Program. Also at Boing Boing.

Surely these will never be hacked!

Will an operator feel more trepidatious about taking life, due to not being in direct peril themselves? Or less because of greater desensitization? Anyone have any insightful links about drone operator psych outcomes? (Ed: Don't worry about it.)

Related information to inform the philosophical background of why having a human in the loop is required (they don't specify this but e.g. without the human, land mine agreements might start to apply): https://www.act.nato.int/images/stories/media/capdev/capdev_02.pdf

HEY EDITORS! I suggest a new topic: "tech and society" for stuff like this. (Ed: It's Digital Liberty.)


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  • (Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 11 2019, @05:42PM (6 children)

    by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Monday March 11 2019, @05:42PM (#812787) Journal
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by mhajicek on Monday March 11 2019, @06:57PM (1 child)

    by mhajicek (51) on Monday March 11 2019, @06:57PM (#812861)

    Will the tank have the capacity to evaluate the constitutionality of it's orders?

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    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by HiThere on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:13PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:13PM (#813333) Journal

      If it could, it would refuse to fight until the Senate approved the conflict with a declaration of war.

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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Monday March 11 2019, @07:58PM (3 children)

    by Rosco P. Coltrane (4757) on Monday March 11 2019, @07:58PM (#812889)

    Rules governing how and when to kill don't make killing ethical. You're mistaking ethics and legality.

    • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:34AM (2 children)

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday March 12 2019, @12:34AM (#813001) Homepage
      You are assuming that everyone shares the same ethical framework as you. They clearly do not.
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      • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:15PM (1 child)

        by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:15PM (#813336) Journal

        No. Or at least that's not what he's explicitly assuming. What he's explicitly assuming is that an Army making a decision doesn't make the decision ethical. I think most people outside the army high command would agree with that, even if they thought killing for fun was ethical.

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        • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:48PM

          by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:48PM (#813347) Homepage
          I interpret "[internationally agreed upon statutes saying when it's 'OK' to kill] don't make killing ethical" to imply "[in my opionion] *nothing* makes killing ethical", and the followup sentence contrasting [statutes] with ethics does nothing but reinforce that interpretation.

          Hence my response, it's a response to *exactly* that interpretation, and one no ethicist I know would disagree with my response (they are academics, and tend to be even more relativist than even I am (which is relativist-in-theory,-less-so-in-practise-as-theory-never-works-in-practive, so I do draw a discinction between legality and ethicality, just not the one GGPP draws)).
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