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From Slashdot Hardware Story | Robotics Prof Fears Rise of Military Robots

Re:”Friendly AI” (Score:5, Insightful)

by jollyreaper (513215) on Thursday January 14, @11:56PM (#30775422)

This is one of the things that makes me think the concern about “friendly AI” is blown out of proportion. The problem isn’t making sure teh AI’s are “friendly” — its making sure the NI (natural intelligence) owners of the AI’s are “friendly”.
If half the effort spent on “friendly AI” were spent on examining the ownership of AI’s, there might be some hope.

That’s just it — human nature never changes. The general can order genocide but it’s up to the soldiers to carry it out. The My Lai Massacre was stopped by a helicopter pilot who put his bird between the civilians and “told his crew that if the U.S. soldiers shot at the Vietnamese while he was trying to get them out of the bunker that they were to open fire at these soldiers.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre [wikipedia.org]

Robots aren’t really the issue — distancing humans from killing is the problem. Not many of us could kill another human being with our bare hands. A knife might make the task easier in the doing but does nothing to ease the psychological horror of it. Guns let you do it at a distance. You don’t even have to touch the guy. And buttons make it easier still. It’s like you’re not even responsible. You could convince young men to fly bombers over enemy cities and rain down incendiaries but I don’t think you could convince many of them to kill even one of those civilians with a gun, let alone a knife.

This is the strange distinction we make where we find one form of killing a horrible thing, a war crime, terrorism, and another form of killing is a regrettable accident but there’s really no blame to be assigned. A suicide bomber walks into a pizzeria and blows himself up, we lose our minds. An Air Force bomber drops an LGB in a bunker filled with civilians instead of top brass, shit happens. We honestly believe there’s a distinction between the two. “Americans didn’t set out to kill civilians” war hawks will huff. Yes, but they’re still dead, aren’t they?

Combat robots are simply continuing this process. Right now there is still a man in the loop to order the attack. Hamas kills Israeli targets with suicide bombs, Israelis deliver high explosives via missile into apartment blocks filled with civilians. They’re using American-manufactured anti-tank missiles. I think they’re still using TOW. Predator drones use hellfires and their operators are sitting in the continental US while Israeli pilots are a few miles away from the target inside their choppers but really, what’s the difference? And what happens when drones are given the authority to engage targets on their own? A soldier with a gun can at least see what he’s shooting at. Those in the artillery corps are firing their shells off into the unseen distance and have no idea who they’re killing. Not that much different from laying land mines, indiscriminate killing. Psychologically no different from what it would be to set a robot on patrol mode, fire-at-will.

If one extrapolates a little further, the problem of the droid army is similar to that of the tradition of unpopular leaders using corps of foreign mercenaries to protect them from the wrath of the people. The mercenaries did not speak the language, did not know the customs, and were counted as immune to palace intrigues. They could be used against the people for they would not the sympathy for fellow countrymen that a native force might feel. What are droids being used for? Only the people operating them could say for sure. Welcome to the age of the push-button assassination.

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