> US-operated drones have killed 910-2,200 civilians, of which 283-454 were children. This all happened with multiple humans in the loop. Those humans decided occasionally killing children is a perfectly acceptable cost of doing business.
That's correct, but it doesn't refute the point of the article, which is that having humans in the loop to make life or death decisions is better than punting those decisions to a computer. Suppose the US had fielded autonomous drones that required no human intervention to release lethal weapons. Would you prefer that to what actually happened?
(And no, saying that you'd prefer that the US not operate the drones at all is not an answer for this discussion, because the analogy to that would be not allowing driving at all. And that's obviously a non-starter.)
> We just decided some people are going to die and that's an acceptable cost of business.
Again, while this is true, it doesn't refute the point of the article, which is that the cost is less with humans in the loop. Would you prefer that automated Teslas running over pedestrians in crosswalks were the new normal, and we just wrote that off as a "cost of doing business"?
That's correct, but it doesn't refute the point of the article, which is that having humans in the loop to make life or death decisions is better than punting those decisions to a computer. Suppose the US had fielded autonomous drones that required no human intervention to release lethal weapons. Would you prefer that to what actually happened?
(And no, saying that you'd prefer that the US not operate the drones at all is not an answer for this discussion, because the analogy to that would be not allowing driving at all. And that's obviously a non-starter.)
> We just decided some people are going to die and that's an acceptable cost of business.
Again, while this is true, it doesn't refute the point of the article, which is that the cost is less with humans in the loop. Would you prefer that automated Teslas running over pedestrians in crosswalks were the new normal, and we just wrote that off as a "cost of doing business"?