SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the actually-taken-over-by-Cybermen dept.
The UK is opposing international efforts to ban "lethal autonomous weapons systems" (Laws) at a week-long United Nations session in Geneva:
The meeting, chaired by a German diplomat, Michael Biontino, has also been asked to discuss questions such as: in what situations are distinctively human traits, such as fear, hate, sense of honour and dignity, compassion and love desirable in combat?, and in what situations do machines lacking emotions offer distinct advantages over human combatants?
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, an alliance of human rights groups and concerned scientists, is calling for an international prohibition on fully autonomous weapons.
Last week Human Rights Watch released a report urging the creation of a new protocol specifically aimed at outlawing Laws. Blinding laser weapons were pre-emptively outlawed in 1995 and combatant nations since 2008 have been required to remove unexploded cluster bombs.
[...] The Foreign Office told the Guardian: "At present, we do not see the need for a prohibition on the use of Laws, as international humanitarian law already provides sufficient regulation for this area. The United Kingdom is not developing lethal autonomous weapons systems, and the operation of weapons systems by the UK armed forces will always be under human oversight and control. As an indication of our commitment to this, we are focusing development efforts on remotely piloted systems rather than highly automated systems."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2015, @04:47PM
Because that other guy is not a nice guy?
I could give you a good example, but then I would Godwin this thread.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Tuesday April 14 2015, @09:53PM
In all fairness "he who should not be named" had a fear of his larger neighbor to the east getting into an empire building mood, which turned out to be correct, so he figured his only hope was to get them before they got him. And his neighbors to the west were obnoxious jerks who destroyed his countries economy and he used the turmoil to gain power, so he knows they're not exactly his best friends AND if they destabilize his country again this time it'll be his head rollin' when the revolutionaries start marching. Also he knew he could trivially beat, smash even, just one front, but if two fronts open then his country loses the war AGAIN so the only possible strategy is to smash the west and wheel around and smash the east.
And the whole mess started back in 1914 because his neighbor, more or less, to the SE collapsed and his rival to the east thought it would be fun to take over the world by taking over the Ottoman empire.
Now he was pretty much a jackass aside from that, but he pretty much did what he had to do, a saint might have lowered the death counts a bit, but only a bit. Nobody in a position of power leading one of the major powers in that entire hemisphere was a nice guy. There were plenty of nice guys in that hemisphere who got totally screwed, but the only thing they all had in common was none of them had any serious political power. A whole hemisphere where the major powers were all led by bloodthirsty lunatics. Europe was a total clusterfuck for the entire first half of the century.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 15 2015, @04:03PM
Which just shifts the example for the argument to that larger neighbour to the east.