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If you bring up terminator when talking about today's robots, you don't know anything about robotics.

Cluster bombs, landmines, nukes, etc. are all much better kill-bots.

The ethics are also trivial: killing civilians is bad. Torture is bad. Killing armed combatants is ok.

Robots are going to be _more_ ethical, because operators won't react instinctively but logically. No one wants to kill civilians. A robot entering a house in Fallujah will be less trigger happy.

I find myself writing this comment every few weeks. People don't know anything about robotics.



If people can hack computers, people will be able to hack robots (should they be able in any way to respond to commands, which they'd better). This is a frightening prospect.


You can hack a gun pretty easily. You point it at someone and pull the trigger.

There is nothing different really. They will be weapons, just like today's weapons.

There are certainly security issues. That isn't unique to robots though. The "robots will kill you" mindset really isn't useful.


Firing a gun from the other side of the world is not so easy. Or firing the gun when it's in the hand of another.


Rogue killer robots are then equivalent to other asymmetric battles. They are a lot like suicide bombers. Except they have giant robot lasers and are easy to spot, unlike a cell that looks like everyone else.

Either way, my point is that the ethics are not at all ambiguous. You put security measures in all your weapons, and you shouldn't think of robots as any different. That is my point.




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