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from the ok-google-reduce-casualties dept.
US has 'moral imperative' to develop AI weapons, says panel:
The US should not agree to ban the use or development of autonomous weapons powered by artificial intelligence (AI) software, a government-appointed panel has said in a draft report for Congress.
The panel, led by former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt, on Tuesday concluded two days of public discussion about how the world’s biggest military power should consider AI for national security and technological advancement.
Its vice-chairman, Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defense, said autonomous weapons are expected to make fewer mistakes than humans do in battle, leading to reduced casualties or skirmishes caused by target misidentification.
“It is a moral imperative to at least pursue this hypothesis,” he said.
[...] Mary Wareham, coordinator of the eight-year Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, said the commission’s “focus on the need to compete with similar investments made by China and Russia … only serves to encourage arms races.”
More Info:
- The National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence Draft Report
- Campaign to Stop Killer Robots
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Bethany.Saint on Wednesday January 27 2021, @07:19PM (8 children)
I agree with that one Star Trek (TOS) war episode where the AI systems fought it out, determined who died, and the citizens calmly walked into disintegration chambers. All neat and tidy without the horrors of war. That show was way ahead of it's time.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday January 27 2021, @07:39PM (2 children)
That's not the only relevant Star Trek episode. Another good one in this vein is "The Arsenal of Freedom", a 1st or 2nd-season ST:TNG episode where the Enterprise comes across a planet with no apparent sentient life or civilization. They soon find that autonomous weapons are still on the planet (and even able to leave the atmosphere and attack the ship), and by the end of the episode they find that this planet's civilization specialized in developing advanced, autonomous weapons systems, but the weapons turned on them and destroyed them all.
(Score: 2) by Bethany.Saint on Wednesday January 27 2021, @07:47PM
I remember this one. I especially liked it because the solution to war was ... consumerism!
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Wednesday January 27 2021, @08:24PM
In this episode, the automation running the weapons was a sales / advertising system (hey Google!) designed to sell you the weapons system. That way the buyer's home planet could eventually experience the destruction of its biological species just as the automated weapons system sales planet had.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @07:47PM (3 children)
The episode is shocking because no people would willingly do that. The philosophical point made was that wars are pointless killing engaged in by two powers, not over anything that matters, and never ending. If you believe THAT... well, then you think about the killing booths as making sense. If you don't buy that silly viewpoint, then the episode seems stupid. How about a different episode: a planet of pacifists willingly becomes slaves to an inferior invading race because the pacifists can't stomach the idea of defending themselves. The invaders don't even have to wage war; they just enslave them like cattle. Oh, that one's already been made: Morlocks and Elloi.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @08:06PM
I want to clarify that I was speaking of wars in GENERAL. Certainly some wars are pointless, and some are valid. At no point though would people willingly show up for the booths. This Star Trek episode makes more sense if you don't consider it "timeless", but rather a product of its time when the Vietnam war was raging for years and soldiers were DRAFTED.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Wednesday January 27 2021, @08:32PM (1 child)
Cap'n Kirk explained it at the end that they kept the war going because they had lost the fear of the true horrors of real (non-virtual) war. They had made it nice and neat.
But it ended the bloody and destructive wars that consumed vast resources. The virtual war was cheaper. And keeps the population from growing out of control.
After watching the US trying to self destruct, I don't think there is anything I would believe that people wouldn't do because people aren't that stupid. Heck, we may yet one day experience global nuclear war, or make ourselves extinct by climate change -- and the alien archeologists would argue that we couldn't possibly be that stupid.
If you think a fertilized egg is a child but an immigrant child is not, please don't pretend your concerns are religious
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 27 2021, @10:18PM
A letter to future alien archeologists:
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Friday January 29 2021, @11:42PM
That story originated in The Lomokome Papers [goodreads.com] by Herman Wouk. Credit where credit is due.