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John Markoff writes in the NYT on a new report written by a former Pentagon official who helped establish United States policy on autonomous weapons who argues that autonomous weapons could be uncontrollable in real-world environments where they are subject to design failure as well as hacking, spoofing and manipulation by adversaries. The report contrasts these completely automated systems, which have the ability to target and kill without human intervention, to weapons that keep humans "in the loop" in the process of selecting and engaging targets. "Anyone who has ever been frustrated with an automated telephone call support helpline, an alarm clock mistakenly set to 'p.m.' instead of 'a.m.,' or any of the countless frustrations that come with interacting with computers, has experienced the problem of 'brittleness' that plagues automated systems," Mr. Scharre writes.
The United States military does not have advanced autonomous weapons in its arsenal. However, this year the Defense Department requested almost $1 billion to manufacture Lockheed Martin's Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, which is described as a "semiautonomous" weapon. The missile is controversial because, although a human operator will initially select a target, it is designed to fly for several hundred miles while out of contact with the controller and then automatically identify and attack an enemy ship. As an alternative to completely autonomous weapons, the report advocates what it describes as "Centaur Warfighting." The term "centaur" has recently come to describe systems that tightly integrate humans and computers. Human-machine combat teaming takes a page from the field of "centaur chess," in which humans and machines play cooperatively on the same team. "Having a person in the loop is not enough," says Scharre. "They can't be just a cog in the loop. The human has to be actively engaged."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 01 2016, @06:44AM
In the past everyone who could throw a stone was military. I dunno what history you've been reading but in the old days wiping out entire villages, towns and cities wasn't that uncommon. Keeping fertile women alive is common and so was enslaving the able bodied ones, but also common was completely killing everyone.
Nowadays the military is the tip of the spear, and rest of the spear is the industrial and population base. Those ships, planes, tanks, and munitions aren't built by soldiers nor are the raw materials mined by soldiers. So of course you destroy the spear.
In the old days before the agricultural or industrial revolution killing everyone could be more beneficial. In those days one farmer couldn't feed that many others and there weren't decent birth control methods. When agricultural and industrial productivity was low if you're going to take over the land and resources, eliminating the current inhabitants isn't such a bad move. But as technology and productivity improved, collecting tribute/taxes started becoming more and more attractive.
Then when productivity improved even more and "norms became more civilized", trade actually makes more and more sense and war less so. And you start hearing leaders say stuff like:
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
In the ancient days, that poor slob on a farm was often willing to risk his life in a war because he had much to gain too: gold, slaves (including sex slaves), his own land (he might not have owned the farm he was working on).
Today that poor slob is risking his life just to make the Military Industrial Complex and their friends richer and more powerful. But of course they tell that poor slob he is defending his country/religion/family. And those poor slobs are usually stupid enough to believe it.