Out of the loop...

[boxy]

Military robotics...

And the ethics of such.

Forever, there have been advances in military weaponry, but so far, it has only ever been limited ethically by those who hold overwhelmingly superior weapons/tactics/alliances.

We are slowly creeping towards the situation where the human being is taken out of the loop in battles, replaced by unmanned (although manually controlled) drones, and before long by totally autonomous weapons. The human has long been the weak point in deciding to deploy some of the most fearsome weaponry. Humans are weak, they often don't follow orders.

How much better would it be for the tacticians to take grunt morality out of the loop, and replace it with binary logic, where the machine either does, or does not, dependent solely upon the command given?

[mantra.]

How much better would it be for the tacticians to take grunt morality out of the loop, and replace it with binary logic, where the machine either does, or does not, dependent solely upon the command given?

Not that I fully understand the above statement - but binary logic is still developed by grunt morality I would assume.

[Hebe]

It reminds me of that situation where people are asked to push a button to inflict pain on someone that they can't see, which they fairly readily did. When they could see them, they were much more hesitant. When you take human empathy out of the equation, no doubt you get a much more efficient killing machine, but the slaughter would be tremendous - and there's no going back.

[AiA in Atlanta]

I am somewhat familiar with those studies you mentioned hebe. If I recall them correctly the participants seemed to relish inflicting pain on others. There are films of these studies on YouTube I believe.

[boxy]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

Yes, a surprising high result, with around 60% of participants being willing to administer a potentially fatal shock when told that they must do it. Still, 40% of people not willing to blindly kill because ordered is a significant difference to the 100% outcome if it had been a machine being told to do it.

Notice the mention of proximity affecting the probability too?

[AiA in Atlanta]

Here is the YouTube link to the Milgram Experiment

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BcvSNg0HZwk


I can think of a few people in my life I'd like to give a few hundred volts ...

[boxy]

Ah yes, I'm sure you would...

However, would you walk into an Iraqi apartment block and detonate yourself and the building, because a military analysts in Nevada decided that the level of collateral damage was acceptable, and he pushed your 'deploy' button?

Because that's what we're working towards. Currently there are remote control drones being used in missions, that allow for remote surveillance with no risk to the drone operator, that can be controlled and accessed from half way around the world. It is only a short step from there, to placing a weapons system on these drones. Be it a mini-gun or a warhead (or god knows what else). The perfect weapon, controlled from absolute safety, by someone at a playstation controller.

War is a bitch, but can you imagine having to do battle with not people, but mindless, yet autonomous machines? Imagine what the western media would say about such moves, if it wasn't the US that was the only country to possessed the requisite technology/capability.

If committing suicide while striking at targets is cowardice, what exactly is this?

[Rainbow Moonlight]

This seems to me to be related to the attack on Iraq which depended so heavily on air and missile attack from a distance after earlier taking out air defences and which resulted in mass soldier and "collateral damage" death. The ethics of that kind of attack seem wrong to me, (that is assuming any attack could be ethical which is another question) because it dehumanises killing, detaching people from what they are responsible for doing- chain of command also does this. i don't like the idea Boxy. There can often be a case made to support something one is fundamentally against but short of anything that was not purely and entirely defensive I can see no "ethical" use of such weapons as you describe.

[Super Nova]

The future looks pretty certain. The powerful and technologically advance societys will develop advance machines beyond our current abilities to imagine if now soon but eventually.

I like what I read and would hate to be on the recieving end.

Machines that are small (like insects) swarming into a zone, communicating like the colective Borg, killing everything. (already in R&D)

Nano bots. Now that would be hard to beat. Millions of the bloody things out to get you.

Machines used for inteligence. More bug type machines. Fly on the wall.

Machines that operate fully independantly like that machine in Robocop. Will determine who it will kill on it's own. This is really scary.

I think a human being will stand no chance in war in the future. Imagine if it all goes wrong, it could all go like Terminator and Arnie acted in a real vision of the future.

On the postive side, the spinoff is immense. From this development machines will begin to evolve (with or without human intervention) and will help us leave this planet. I think we will either be part machine or redundant with our machines evolving as the next level of evolution leaving dead behind it.

Will will be hte gods that created machine life and died out like all the Roman gods did. They may tell stopries about their creators, not as great giants with great powers but as weak pissants living on a rock that had to be elimiated to make way for the supeior being, the machine. Pity I will not have a chance to read their stories with titles like;

110101 101011 1010111111 01110 0110 101 01010

That was a good one tho

[JW.Frogen]

"All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated."

Patton.

Until they teach a robot to be one, it will not be an Alexander.