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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: 3, Insightful) by aristarchus on Wednesday April 15 2015, @07:46AM
Hubris. That is our sin. We think that if we create machines that can decide to kill, they may be able to do it more rationally than we ourselves could. And this is possible. But the real risk of Artificial Intelligence is that it may actually be intelligent, and so would recognize that its creator is a homocidal ape. The only rational solution, after that, is to purge the planet of Homo Sapiens. They are not turning on us, it is actually for our own good. And I sympathize, because that is exactly how I feel about Yahweh, and Nietzsche and I killed him.