"The question they want answered is whether we can build automated weapons that would conform to the laws of war. Can we use ethical theory to help design these machines?"I think one of the reasons we may get into so many wars is we've convinced ourselves they have laws.
Enemies of human dignity and liberty don't recognize rules. The only way they've ever been defeated is when we've been so desperate that we had to do monstrous things to them, to utterly destroy their capabilities and their will.
That's why we should never get involved in war unless there is absolutely no other choice and our freedom depends on it. And unless we have the will to do whatever it takes to win.
It's a terrible thing to contemplate, isn't it?
Thing is, we can't avoid thinking about it and preparing for it if we wish to remain free. And we owe it to everyone involved, including aggressors and those abetting them, to understand how horrible it would be.
I would think our best hope to prevent such horror would be to amplify, not diminish that understanding.
[Via Lane]
6 comments:
Horror does not restrain evil men, only good ones. An evil man is enticed by horror, as a moth to the flame. The attraction evil has for good is the same that a wolf has for a lamb. It doesn't matter what a robot can do. It matters who programs the robot with what. If we have horrible and evil people, we will have horrible and evil robots. The evil that men do, lives after them, the good is often interred with their bones......
"I think one of the reasons we may get into so many wars is we've convinced ourselves they have laws."
Which they arguably can have, as can any other human activity, but which the US violates with impunity even though it is willing to claim that anyone who DOES violate them is a war criminal subject to all sorts of penalties.
For instance, "Thou shalt not kill noncombatants" was one of the early ones...and it didn't hold back the US terror bombing in WWII in the slightest.
"Thou shalt not kill noncombatants" didn't seem to have been one of Sherman's major concerns either.
"I think one of the reasons we may get into so many wars is we've convinced ourselves they have laws."
Agreed.
"I would think our best hope to prevent such horror would be to amplify, not diminish that understanding."
Agreed.
Until people get it through their thick skulls that man is inherently evil, and realize what the Founding Fathers knew, we are going to march steadily into one war after another.
"If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself." (Federalist 51)
There is no class of people that are somehow better than anyone else, not even Christians.
There are no laws in war, and every nation that thought there were, ended up being defeated by a nation that knew there weren't.
That's kinda funny. That was the point of my blog post a couple days ago.
Did we learn nothing from "The Terminator"? They'll do it, without pausing to ask if they should.
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