

Soon, Drones May Be Able to Make Lethal Decisions on Their Own - 1337biz
http://www.nationaljournal.com/national-security/soon-drones-may-be-able-to-make-lethal-decisions-on-their-own-20131008

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j_baker
This isn't surprising. I think the future of warfare will be massive armies of
drones controlled by algorithms. If we can remove the pilot from the equation,
we can drastically increase the size of our military. That's not to say that
algorithmic warfare will be _good_. I'm merely saying it is inevitable.

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samograd
Can't we just do that in a computer and pretend that things were destroyed and
killed? Maybe calculate the transfer of wealth that would have occurred as a
consequence of inferior algorithms leading to the destruction of your virtual
societies?

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benologist
Then you'd need a real army to enforce the victory.

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samograd
I'm sure the financial sector is ready to take on such a challenge.

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johngalt
Landmines already make lethal decisions on their own. They just use far
simpler heuristics.

There's not going to be some big red switch that is flipped and suddenly the
machines decide what to shoot at. Instead there will just be a gradual
extension of fire control mechanisms.

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Silhouette
_Landmines already make lethal decisions on their own. They just use far
simpler heuristics._

And they have an appalling track record for making the wrong decision, because
those simple heuristics also tend to produce answers like "Kill this five-
year-old child because they're playing in a field where a war took place
twenty years ago".

If you're trying to make an argument for why automated killing machines are a
bad idea, landmines are just about the perfect example.

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luke-stanley
"on Their Own" isn't correct, there is still legal liability, even if it's
distant, someone has to ok the algo, someone has to fund it, people have to
start the process off... Heat seeking missiles aren't new, and are also
automated yet lethal...

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hooande
Lethal Autonomous Robots are inevitable. They think faster than humans, are
much more tactically coordinated and all of them can be updated with new
instructions and bug fixes. Just ask a marine captain how difficult it is to
bug fix and update his men and you can see the value.

The best way to use drones is to think of them as the appendages or hands of
one robotic brain instead of individual units. The beauty of networked robots
is that they are _ultimately_ coordinated, one knows what all the others know
at all times. This is the absolute dream of military commanders. They would
adopt the idea much more readily if it didn't put them out of a job. The only
reason we can hang on the nostalgia of men at war is because the US hasn't
faced a serious military threat in a very long time. Eventually this will no
longer be the case and drone on drone combat will be the only reasonable
option.

One objection that people have is that drones will eliminate the human cost of
war and make destructive combat more common. I say that frequent combat is
just fine as long as humans aren't involved. In the future opposing sides will
resolve conflicts by destroying a few hundred million dollars of equipment
instead of destroying human lives. I'm hoping that total war will be phased
out as machines become powerful enough to dominate the battlefield.

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Silhouette
_Lethal Autonomous Robots are inevitable. They think faster than humans_

On the contrary. They _follow orders_ faster than humans. They don't _think_
at all, in the sense that a human can with their adaptability and ethical
awareness and ability to make a judgement call that a situation is not
something the predetermined rules were designed to handle.

This is the main reason I don't see LARs becoming widely used. They are
superior to human warriors in the kind of war that is decided by split-second
reactions, when you know exactly who the enemy is and you're otherwise roughly
evenly matched. Very few modern wars are actually like that.

 _The beauty of networked robots is that they are ultimately coordinated, one
knows what all the others know at all times. This is the absolute dream of
military commanders._

But that dream becomes a nightmare if the system is ever compromised. Of
course, no battlefield-wide, 100% computer-driven, 100% remote-controlled
system would ever be deployed with a security vulnerability, for the same
reasons that no military equipment ever fails under combat conditions, no
military unit in the field ever finds itself unable to communicate with its
commanders, no computer virus has ever found its way into a secure
installation, no software bug has ever caused military equipment to fail, and
no human involved in the military or intelligence communities or their
suppliers has ever been disloyal.

 _One objection that people have is that drones will eliminate the human cost
of war and make destructive combat more common._

What is the point of having these machines, if they will not ultimately result
in a human cost? Weapons of war are made for one purpose, and one purpose
only: to be able to kill people. Any more desirable outcomes, like taking
control of a hostile country without actually killing everyone, tend to be
predicated on the threat that you can do so if you need to.

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stcredzero
What if a drone could drop something like a small cluster-bomb munition, but
instead of bomblets, the payload was a bunch of smaller quadcopter drones
equipped with TASERs and programmed to immobilize anyone in the area? This
wouldn't be free of fatalities, but it could involve far fewer of them.

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bayesianhorse
And then what? You'd have to have a commando team in these tribal areas close
enough to catch the incapacitated victims before they can stand up again.

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stcredzero
I was thinking in the context of domestic use along the border or for use with
drug interdiction.

Also, I can think of uses for temporarily incapacitating people. The US
government sends in an airstrike along a corridor covered by airbases.
However, when the opposing air forces try to scramble their jets, their pilots
are incapacitated and harassed by quadcopter drones deployed from a container
dropped earlier by a stealthed drone. I think there would be a lot of uses for
such capability for special forces units.

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PeterisP
A cluster bomb delivered in that same container would be cheaper, more
effective and with less risk to fail.

In military applications, it is almost always easier to permanently
incapacitate people. Tech for temporary incapacitation is needed only in those
very rare cases where we really, really need someone alive; where the capture
is so vital that it's worth risking and often spending our troop lives to
achieve that.

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stcredzero
_> A cluster bomb delivered in that same container would be cheaper, more
effective and with less risk to fail._

Yes. This scheme is bending over backwards to try not to kill people. Just
killing them would be much simpler.

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devx
Good TED talk for why that shouldn't happen:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMYYx_im5QI)

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rnernento
I for one look forward to Judgement Day...

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ExpiredLink
Sorry, but machines do not make decisions, never will. Humans that create
machines make decisions.

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samograd

        void decide() {
            while(((float)rand() / RAND_MAX) > 0.00000001);
            push_the_button();
        }
        
        int main() { decide(); }
    

Relevant:
[http://www.vagrearg.org/content/edm](http://www.vagrearg.org/content/edm)

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joshlegs
So, what you're saying is "Eagle Eye" might come true soon then?

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gotoblob
whadya think of the redesigned site?

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correctifier
I think if you want to maintain the image of a respected journal you should
probably disable commenting on the site..

