
Q&A on the ethics of warfare in the autonomous future - stablemap
https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2017-12-30/nobody-s-ready-for-the-killer-robot
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gt_
_> RL: Generally, some of the things that had to do with biology were a little
frightening, things like synthetic biology where you don't really know the
ultimate implications. And some of the work with electromagnetics was a little
scary, particularly as it had to do with humans and lethality.

TH: Got it. So you spent some time in the private sector, and …_

Got it? Really? Am I alone in having nothing but questions in my mind after
such a briefing? Sure, the interview must go on, but the lack of precision in
this “got it” is disturbing to me. I have noticed this phrase being use in
some loose ways lately. Am I being too sensitive?

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ams6110
Seems pretty clear to me that he was not in a position to offer any specifics.
Probably due to NDA or national security yada yada yada.

~~~
gt_
My comment concerns the interviewer's "Got it" response, not the interviewee's
lack of information. I immediately considered what you're saying, but I wonder
if it justifies the affirmative response. Your assumption is merely
contextually reasonable. It is not implied and not 'clear'.

I think it's becoming accepted to say "got it" when a conveyance is understood
even when the conveyance remains _between the lines_. The result is a
confirmation of one of two meanings, and no telling which one it is. It's a
lot worse when the only value is to be snarky. I've seen both result in
dysfunction, though. I think I prefer sincerity.

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semi-extrinsic
Well, it says in the article _" here is a lightly edited transcript of our
discussion"_. The actual raw transcript was probably more like:

 _TH: Interesting, can you tell me some more about what worries you most here?

RL: I'm afraid I can't share any more details. Let's move on.

TH: So you spent some time in the private sector, and …_

where the first part was edited into _Got it_.

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goatsi
It will be interesting to see how human soldiers will react to the
introduction of autonomous allies. They already have trust issues with
unmanned systems [0], I imagine the reaction against to autonomous systems
will be even stronger.

[0] [https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-
states/2017-1...](https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-
states/2017-12-20/why-troops-dont-trust-drones)

~~~
gaius
But surely drones aren’t unmanned? Just their pilot is elsewhere. Curious as
to what the real root of this is.

~~~
goatsi
The focus seems to be on the fact that the pilot is elsewhere. From the
article:

>Instead, the trust issue was a human issue. Not once did any of our
respondents refer to a drone pilot as a human. Instead, drones were discussed
in abstract terms that explicitly avoided any reference to a human controlling
the machine. UAVs were “robots” or “machines” whose “operators,” as one
respondent put it, were playing a video game “a world away.” This is despite
the fact that most of them knew there was a human controlling the drone, and
some even knew these pilots personally. Yet across the JTAC community, we
heard a familiar narrative: drone pilots were coffee-drinking gamers whose
distance from the battlefield severed their emotional connection to friendly
ground troops. For instance, one of the JTACs explained that he preferred
manned aircraft because their pilots “are in the fight, not just sipping a
latte playing a video game.”

