A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties
Eh. I see this as an “flying landmine,” not an existential Terminator kind of thing.
A computer is not making a “decision” to kill. Its a machine. It’s bomb exploding when triggered, just with extra steps of flying to a specific spot.
It’s morally problematic. Like landmines.
But I think people are falsly attributing anything resembling sentience to this system, like they do with conversation-trained LLMs. Humans made the “decision” way ahead of time, just like when they set up land mines or perform a bombing run.
You can, to some extent, avoid an undiscriminating minefield. You can, to some extent, plead for mercy from the jack boot kicking in your door. You cannot avoid or plead with a mine flying through your bedroom window.
You can’t plead with a missile either. Nor a camouflaged IED.
I’m not saying it’s morale. It’s not.
I’m just saying this isn’t a case of “an artificial intelligence pulling the trigger.” It is not “fully autonomous” kill in the way the headline insinuates. This is a toaster preprogrammed to explode, autonomously.
In fact, I’d argue it’s a dangerous characterization, as it removes some culpability from whoever setup the kill drone, like the equipment made a decision. The equipment did not make the decision, its operator did.
I fail to see your point. Yes weapons kill people. But no weapon in history could
be cheaply dispersed over populated areas
linger for hours or potentially days
patrol and chase targets into any kind of cover
instantly and autonomously take offensive action outside of any chain of command
Did you read the article? The equipment does make the decision. That’s the whole point. One remote operator vibe-killing scores of people extremely efficiently. Yes there’s a human deciding to put the drones in flight but why would that remove culpability any more than collateral damage from a traditional explosive?
By your logic, nukes exist so there’s no reason to worry about any other types of war crime.
That’s what I’m trying to reiterate. I’m not saying we shouldn’t worry about it. This is horrific.
But it’s not Terminator. It’s further extended drone warfare.
There’s a very important distinction between this, and some kind of cognizant machine that starts in a relatively neutral state and decides to kill certain targets, like (say) the corpo robots one often sees in cyberpunk fiction. One that has agency to set that up in the first place.
I see a lot of correlation between fictional war bots, tech bro “AI,” and this kind of drone warfare, and they are all completely unrelated. The most sophisticated thing going on here is a CV guidance system dumber than many missiles, and I just don’t want to muddy the waters with any kind of assertion that these weapons have any sapience, that we’ve “offloaded” the decision to kill. It’s just a very immoral weapon, indeed very detached from deployment.
Eh. I see this as an “flying landmine,” not an existential Terminator kind of thing.
A computer is not making a “decision” to kill. Its a machine. It’s bomb exploding when triggered, just with extra steps of flying to a specific spot.
It’s morally problematic. Like landmines.
But I think people are falsly attributing anything resembling sentience to this system, like they do with conversation-trained LLMs. Humans made the “decision” way ahead of time, just like when they set up land mines or perform a bombing run.
You can, to some extent, avoid an undiscriminating minefield. You can, to some extent, plead for mercy from the jack boot kicking in your door. You cannot avoid or plead with a mine flying through your bedroom window.
You can’t plead with a missile either. Nor a camouflaged IED.
I’m not saying it’s morale. It’s not.
I’m just saying this isn’t a case of “an artificial intelligence pulling the trigger.” It is not “fully autonomous” kill in the way the headline insinuates. This is a toaster preprogrammed to explode, autonomously.
In fact, I’d argue it’s a dangerous characterization, as it removes some culpability from whoever setup the kill drone, like the equipment made a decision. The equipment did not make the decision, its operator did.
I fail to see your point. Yes weapons kill people. But no weapon in history could
Did you read the article? The equipment does make the decision. That’s the whole point. One remote operator vibe-killing scores of people extremely efficiently. Yes there’s a human deciding to put the drones in flight but why would that remove culpability any more than collateral damage from a traditional explosive?
By your logic, nukes exist so there’s no reason to worry about any other types of war crime.
That’s what I’m trying to reiterate. I’m not saying we shouldn’t worry about it. This is horrific.
But it’s not Terminator. It’s further extended drone warfare.
There’s a very important distinction between this, and some kind of cognizant machine that starts in a relatively neutral state and decides to kill certain targets, like (say) the corpo robots one often sees in cyberpunk fiction. One that has agency to set that up in the first place.
I see a lot of correlation between fictional war bots, tech bro “AI,” and this kind of drone warfare, and they are all completely unrelated. The most sophisticated thing going on here is a CV guidance system dumber than many missiles, and I just don’t want to muddy the waters with any kind of assertion that these weapons have any sapience, that we’ve “offloaded” the decision to kill. It’s just a very immoral weapon, indeed very detached from deployment.