[HN Gopher] U.N. talks adjourn without deal to regulate 'killer ...
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U.N. talks adjourn without deal to regulate 'killer robots'
Author : Tomte
Score : 79 points
Date : 2021-12-18 17:46 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.reuters.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.reuters.com)
| barelysapient wrote:
| I suspect 'killer robots' wont be banned until after they are
| used to great effect in some future conflict. Think chemical
| weapons bans that emerged after WWI.
| heyitsguay wrote:
| Chemical weapons were banned because they weren't very
| effective on the battlefield and generated horrible PR for all
| involved, so it was an easy win for everyone to ban them.
|
| The problem with autonomous weapon platforms (probably swarms)
| is that it looks like they're very powerful weapons that give
| their users advantages over existing capabilities. Enforcing a
| ban on them will be like enforcing a ban on gunpowder with
| swords and castles.
| [deleted]
| unchocked wrote:
| From a normative perspective, terminators are self-evidently
| dangerous as all hell and should be prohibited.
|
| From a realist frame, I don't think there will be a deal. Narrow
| national interests are too divergent w/r/t/ capabilities,
| intentions, and alternatives. Furthermore, verifibility and
| consequent trust is weak.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _terminators are self-evidently dangerous as all hell and
| should be prohibited_
|
| These are war machines. "Dangerous" _per se_ cannot be a
| disqualifier.
| tbrake wrote:
| Are you sure OP's use of "dangerous" wasn't around the
| implications of fully autonomous, no-human-intervention
| nature proposed in the article, and not the blatantly literal
| destructive nature of all war machines?
| RGamma wrote:
| As always in unstable equilibria all is fine and well as long
| as everyone complies, but anyone may gain a unilateral
| advantage misbehaving.
|
| Pragmatically it's a lack of higher (multilateral) enforcement
| why these power plays persist.
| Aerroon wrote:
| But the reason why higher enforcement doesn't exist is
| because nobody is trustworthy enough for it. American
| domination has been relatively good for the West, but
| citizens of many countries have immensely suffered as a
| result. Going back further it was European dominance that
| everyone else suffered under.
|
| Multilateral enforcement becomes yet another tool to take
| advantage of others that aren't invited.
| kurthr wrote:
| I think the real reason to hope for some form of prohibition
| (Geneva Convention) is that Terminators nominally make warfare
| more palatable than nukes, cruise missiles, or tanks &
| artillery. Those are obviously untargeted and make for
| "riveting video" and terrified populations (useful for other
| purposes of course).
|
| Automated Safety Enforcement Drones are selective and only
| issue quick justice to the baddies who stand in the way of
| freedom! If you can't shame leaders based on their prior
| agreements civil society doesn't have much else to do.
|
| Really, think about what happens when these tools of warfare
| return home for civilian use, because if they can, they will.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Terminators nominally make warfare more palatable than
| nukes, cruise missiles, or tanks & artillery_
|
| I guess I'd want to see evidence for this before pursuing an
| international moratorium everyone will undoubtedly violate
| the second it's signed. Remote fire doesn't seem that much
| closer than remote kill authorisations.
| msla wrote:
| How are these autonomous killer robots significantly different
| from cruise missiles?
| ryankupyn wrote:
| I think the key distinction is that, for the most part, the
| current generation of cruise missiles are targeted and launched
| with a "human in the loop" - that is, a person actively makes
| the decision to fire the missile at a specific target. However,
| the autonomous weapons being debated have significantly less
| direct human control - they are potentially designed to simply
| patrol a certain area and attack anything that the weapon
| classifies as an enemy.
|
| Of course, there are grey areas here - certainly there are
| existing missiles that can be launched without a defined target
| and programmed to aim for anything that, say, has radar
| emissions that match known enemy systems.
| ahnick wrote:
| Autonomous drones with weapon systems coupled with sufficiently
| advanced obstacle avoidance, facial recognition, and other
| AI/ML identification based systems, could swarm cities and
| eliminate entire battalions or local populations with little to
| no environmental or infrastructural damage. Imagine Russia
| preparing to invade the Donbas region of Ukraine and ahead of
| that invasion deploying a couple of drone swarms to "clear out"
| a bulk of the Ukranian army presence. Drones could idle, lie in
| wait and silently hunt opposing forces. It could significantly
| lower the cost (number of casualties) of invasion for the
| attacking force.
| trhway wrote:
| It is already here. Ukraine got Turkish drones, and Russia
| can only amass large WWII style force in response which are
| going to be slaughtered by the drones.
|
| Drones are the new paradigm of warfare which allows smaller
| players to play in many situations (like the modern limited
| local wars) on par with the big ones without attempting to
| acquire nuclear. No UN talks can prevent those smaller
| players from development of such capabilities.
| heyitsguay wrote:
| Yeah I've been kinda wondering about what the deal is there
| - given the slow public build-up of forces it seems hard to
| imagine Russia going forward with an old-school invasion
| when all those troops will just be drone fodder. Is it for
| internal propaganda? A way to gather intelligence on
| Ukraine's defensive responses? I'm sure it's hard to tell
| from the outside.
| trhway wrote:
| Ukraine has got strategic advance with the drones (Russia
| didn't get the message 2 years ago when the air defense
| Pantsir systems got slaughtered in Syria by those
| drones). Such a huge advance is though temporary - those
| Russian air defenses need upgrade to deal with the
| drones, and it will be done in the near future. So,
| Ukraine got window of opportunity to solve Donbass the
| way Azerbajan solved the Karabah using the same drones a
| year ago. So Russia is trying to prevent it by the public
| buildup of forces in the way which clearly shows that it
| can cut Ukranian Donbass forces from the rest of the
| country by scissor invasion from North and South behind
| those forces if Ukraine makes a move on Donbass now. Such
| invasion will be with huge losses and will cost Russia a
| lot and is very risky, and Russia doesn't want it (at
| least not at the cost it is going to be at right now),
| and i'm not sure that Russia can really pull it right
| now, yet it is the only response Russia got for now, thus
| such a public build-up of the forces looking a lot like
| bluffing in poker.
| [deleted]
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| You do the arm signal for drone swarm, shout "drones, drones,
| drones!", and drop to the ground and cover yourself in your
| poncho.
|
| My point is that we adapt. It's not worse than chemical
| weapons and it's preferable to bombing entire cities to
| achieve your objective. Is it finally dawning on HN that war
| is hell?
| pharke wrote:
| You're missing the point, new technological developments in
| warfare aren't about "worse or better" since one human
| wishing to inflict suffering or death on another needs only
| a sharp stick or a rock and their imagination to produce
| the worst forms of torture. They're about physical
| distance. Fighting hand to hand requires an immense level
| of personal commitment to causing harm. Each technological
| advance in warfare has lowered that barrier by increasing
| the distance at which you can maim and kill. It's now
| possible to kill without ever seeing the person you are
| killing. Autonomous weapons are the final stage of this
| development where you don't even need to make the decision
| to kill, you simply design some inevitably flawed
| conditions under which you would theoretically kill someone
| and the machine takes care of the rest.
|
| I think the objective should be preventing war and that
| means making it more difficult to kill not less.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > I think the objective should be preventing war
|
| I agree and that's usually the connotation behind the
| words, "war is hell." Unfortunately, either the entire
| world agrees to never weaponize drones or we all need to
| start thinking about weaponizing drones. That's how arms
| races work.
|
| If wars are going to happen though I think we are better
| off with drones rather than annihilating entire cities,
| civilians and soldiers together. It's important to elect
| leaders who are not cavalier about deploying drones
| needlessly.
| redis_mlc wrote:
| The problem with killer robots is that it lowers the political
| threshold for both starting wars, and for continuing them.
|
| In Europe today, even 2 or 3 dead soldiers is enough to end
| coalition participation. (Japan's participation in Iraq wasn on
| the condition of no direct combat and no casualties, so other
| countries had to babysit the Japanese soldiers.)
|
| The US in WW2 had to invade Japan ASAP before the political will
| at home faded, which is why unconditional surrender was demanded
| - there was no way politically to rearm and sail across the
| Pacific again. Meanwhile, that wasn't a factor for the Axis or
| Russia.
|
| Japan's behavior in China in WW2 was basically identical to what
| you see in the "Terminator" movies. Something to think about.
| peakaboo wrote:
| I read articles like this and I think "enjoy every minute of your
| lives" because it's only getting worse from here.
| tempnow987 wrote:
| If you are a major power with the capability to make 100K+ killer
| drones or similar per year, going to be hard to get you to sign
| this.
|
| What is the drones annual salary? What is their annual housing
| cost, base allowance costs, VA medical benefits (lifetime)? How
| upset will your population be if one is "killed". Get the
| beancounters involved, and killer drones are going to be very
| tempting. For $75B per year or so (10% of US military budget)
| what kind of killer drones could I buy and how many?
|
| The cost to deploy one F35 is astronomical. The training costs
| and lifetime costs for the pilots alone is heavy. The F-35
| dedicates MASSIVE payload to life support for its human occupant.
| What kind of killer drones can you build with none of that mass,
| none of the gforce limits? None of the redundancy requirements?
| Do you need an aircraft carrier (thousands of sailors! -> needs
| destroyers and a battle group). No?
|
| Can we design these to drop from space? Park 50K in space for
| quick de-orbit and insertion globally? Can you do this with
| people these days easily?
|
| Going to be a scary world.
|
| My quick guess is US, China, Russia, EU (maybe), India as places
| with enough capacity for this type of next gen battlefield? Maybe
| EU will move too slowly, so it'll be US / China / Russia?
| hutzlibu wrote:
| A human can make smart decisions, even if his radio is jammed
| and he has no connection to base.
|
| What does a "smart" killer robot do, without remote connection,
| in an unexpected situation? And wars are full of those.
|
| And massive jamming (and hacking attempts as well as sensor
| confusion) is to be expected. So you either have armies that
| stop fighting regulary out of savety protocols (how likely is
| that in a war?). Or they do not stop fighting and make AI
| decisions on who to kill.
|
| As far as I am aware, every side knows this and every side is
| very uncomfortable with this. But it seems every side feels
| pushed to advance.
|
| And sure, humans make errors, too. But autonomous robots have a
| tendency to work most of the time - and then unexpectedly make
| a exponentionally mess.
|
| That's why most robots who can do damage, work in very
| constraint settings.
|
| But even harmless roombas did make a mess, by swiping dog poo
| all over the house, while "thinking" it is cleaning.
|
| Swarms of killer bots out of control .. is a scenario no one
| wants. And military is about control, they do not like things
| they feel they cannot control. So there will be caution.
| Hopefully it is enough, to not trigger bigger, potentially
| nuclear mess.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > What does a "smart" killer robot do, without remote
| connection, in an unexpected situation?
|
| Possibly kill anything that looks like an enemy, then attempt
| to return to base or self-destruct.
|
| I expect killer robots will be programmed with geographic
| areas within which they are allowed to kill things.
| hutzlibu wrote:
| "killer robots will be programmed with geographic areas
| within which they are allowed to kill things."
|
| What about sensor jamming or confusing? How to make sure,
| it is in the right "kill" area?
|
| And if you designate a zone as free to kill everything, you
| might as well nuke the area.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > What about sensor jamming or confusing?
|
| This will no doubt happen.
|
| > How to make sure, it is in the right "kill" area?
|
| If a robot knows where it started from it can use dead
| reckoning to know roughly where it is. It can also use
| landmarks it identifies, or celestial navigation.
|
| All of these should give it a reasonably accurate idea of
| its whereabouts.
|
| > And if you designate a zone as free to kill everything,
| you might as well nuke the area.
|
| No, because a lot of UGVs will be used as area denial
| weapons, i.e. as a smart minefield. They might typically
| stay where they are and monitor than no-one uses the
| area. Nukes can't do that.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| After WWI, the mass horror caused by certain types of weapons
| like chemical weapons were enough to get all powerful countries
| to agree we didn't want to see them on the planet.
|
| Hopefully we'll have a chance to recover from the new horrors
| we are creating too.
|
| Whether you have the capability to make them or not, either the
| US, Russia, both, or someone else will be HAPPY to sell you a
| bunch. Which is another reason those with the capability to
| make them want to keep it, to make the money, maybe even a more
| significant reason. And countries that _don't_ have the
| resources to pay for F-35s or air craft carrieres have possibly
| more to 'gain' here. Killer robots will be a great equalizer in
| the ability to create a nightmare hellscape, making it
| accessible on a much cheaper budget.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > Killer robots will be a great equalizer in the ability to
| create a nightmare hellscape
|
| I imagine most people here have already seen the
| Slaughterbots video:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA
|
| A more conventional type of attack would be using large
| numbers cheap cruise missiles. If you can make them for $20k
| each then $1bn would buy you 50,000 of them, which is
| probably a good deal more than the number of anti-aircraft
| missiles your adversary has, and certainly a lot more than
| their number of fighter aircraft. Therefore firing off a lot
| in one go would overload their defences and many would get
| through. If aimed at infrastructure target, they could
| cripple a country's economy, and how soon after that do
| people start starving?
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| I hadn't seen that video, thanks for pointing it out.
|
| Eh, the rest of the world would probably gang up on you at
| that point, it'd be pretty suicidal.
|
| I think a more likely scenario is killer robots are making
| the places that state and non-state actors already "get
| away" with turning into nightmares just that much more
| nightmarish, and that many more of them. Whether it's the
| USA in Afghanistan or what goes on in Sudan or Somalia.
| More and more places like that, which will be more and more
| nightmarish. Would the USA even have to "give up" on
| Afghanistan with that tech doing what the drones alone
| couldn't? But now also the smaller-budget actors like
| Somalian warlords get their go at it. It's gonna be great.
| runnerup wrote:
| I believe "slaughterbots" may be able to better evade
| certain types of air defense (e.g. CIWS), in exchange for
| maybe being more susceptible to other types of air defense
| (EMP?).
|
| Additionally, hypothetical slaughterbots would have much
| lower civilian casualties.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| >After WWI, the mass horror caused by certain types of
| weapons like chemical weapons were enough to get all powerful
| countries to agree we didn't want to see them on the planet.
|
| They were banned because nobody liked them and they weren't
| tactically useful.
|
| If they were useful they wouldn't have been "banned".
| onion2k wrote:
| The last thing the defence industry wants is for governments to
| spend less on warfare. If these robots ever get deployed to a
| battlefield it'll be as something like mechanised landmines or
| assistive tech for warfighters, not a replacement for existing
| tech.
| yholio wrote:
| The total costs will not go down, but the effectiveness
| increases substantially until everyone "has to have" the same
| expensive technology and funding cannot possibly be
| diminished lest our country becomes vulnerable.
|
| The dreaded "arms race" doing its thing since the dawn of
| humanity.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| The issue is not technology, it is that some states have
| objectives that're irreconcilable with other states. For
| example, Russia and China both want to conquer other
| countries (e.g. Ukraine, Taiwan), something that many
| countries are against (obviously including the ones
| threatened with being conquered).
| joshgrib wrote:
| I agree with your analysis that this is a core issue, but
| something that bothers me with these discussions is:
|
| > If you are a major power with the capability to make 100K+
| killer drones
|
| "The major power" is the people that make up the country, which
| largely don't support this stuff, but there's a handful of
| decision-makers that can push for this even when the people
| don't want it. I feel like it's helpful to focus on how it is
| individual people making these decisions that are going to harm
| others - not just a result of a country having a certain amount
| of power/capability. Any one of those people could go public
| and say that they're not going to let their country go down
| that path and that they'll discourage others from doing it, but
| they choose not to for fear of the results.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > "The major power" is the people that make up the country,
| which largely don't support this stuff
|
| The populations of most countries probably don't want to
| attack foreign countries, but they absolutely do want to
| avoid being attacked by foreign countries, and if having
| scary weapons will do this, most will be for them.
| [deleted]
| rapind wrote:
| Except they aren't cheap at all (even if they should be) and
| the defence contractors building them aren't exactly doing an
| awesome job for all that money.
|
| Remember this?
| https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB126102247889095011
| jMyles wrote:
| > If you are a major power with the capability to make 100K+
| killer drones or similar per year, going to be hard to get you
| to sign this.
|
| Surely the individual decision-makers are, as with all human
| beings, averse to a world swarming with killer robots.
|
| That states make indefensible decisions with much greater
| frequency than their individual statesfolk is so obvious at
| this point; it's time to simply stop tolerating their existence
| and move more swiftly into the next stage of information
| humanity.
|
| I'm a citizen of one of the states you mention and I can assure
| you: amidst all the disagreement and political polarization,
| there is complete consensus on not wanting a world dominated by
| killer robots.
| syrrim wrote:
| What action can actually be taken towards that goal? Your own
| country can avoid creating these robots. But you can't know
| that any other country isn't pursuing them. Even if you
| could, the political capacity to sanction them for it is
| quite limited. So the most likely outcome of trying to ban
| them is that every country assumes every other country is
| still building them in secret, and thus every country still
| builds them in secret. Eventually, the fact that they are
| building them in secret becomes public, and ultimately
| nothing is done about it. Having a world with killer robots
| in it is bad, but a world where your enemies have killer
| robots and you don't is far worse. The decision makers will
| all be very cognizant of that fact.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > But you can't know that any other country isn't pursuing
| them.
|
| Indeed, what would happen is that if such a treaty was
| signed, some other countries would develop them anyway, as
| hidden modes for the use of their otherwise non-autonmous
| UAVs and UGVs. So any such treaty would essentially be
| handing the world to countries that cheat -- which would
| likely include Russia and China.
| drekk wrote:
| This kind of reasoning is circular. It justifies any and
| all escalation on the _chance_ that others are doing the
| same. Also baked into the assumption is that fire fights
| fire.
|
| I don't want my state to produce killer robots. Even if
| other states do. I can only impact my own. It's no secret
| that the US disproportionately engages in this "warfare"
| (read: asymmetrical slaughter) and even under a "liberal"
| head of state (Obama) civilian casualties of our drone
| program was 90%.
|
| You're also assuming regulating killer robots means a ban,
| when the international community could restrict deployments
| or justifiable uses. It's much more realistic even if rogue
| drones are created.
|
| The decision makers are duly elected representatives of
| their constituent body and it is beyond time they acted
| like it. Otherwise we're going to keep having more
| Vietnams, more Afghanistans, more pointless civilian death.
| dmurray wrote:
| It's possible to be more cynical about this, but yet to
| come to a more optimistic conclusion.
|
| If the world's great military powers publicly swear off
| "killer drones" (let's assume we can meaningfully define
| such a thing), then they will continue to develop them in
| secret, but they won't use them in every little border
| skirmish: every Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, or Crimea.
| They'll keep them for the big game.
|
| This has two good effects (assuming further development of
| killer drones is bad). Firstly, those of us unfortunate
| enough to be caught up in the horrendous bloody conflicts I
| callously described as "border skirmishes" won't
| additionally suffer from killer drone attacks. Secondly,
| development of the drones and the military doctrine
| surrounding them will be stymied: you can do a lot in the
| lab but any technology develops so much faster with the
| feedback loop that comes from using it in anger.
|
| Moreover, if there's a big war we're all screwed anyway. If
| that's your focus, you need to argue that drone availablity
| makes a big war more likely I'm not convinced that it does
| - making war cheap makes _small_ war more likely, but all
| the decision makers know the cost of a big war.
|
| Edit: compare to anti-personnel landmines, or chemical
| weapons. Both of those see less use because of weapons
| bans. You might say no, they see less use because the great
| military powers no longer need them - but you're missing a
| step. The great powers no longer need them, they decry them
| as inhumane, they sign bans, and then (almost) everyone
| stops using them.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > The great powers no longer need them, they decry them
| as inhumane, they sign bans, and then (almost) everyone
| stops using them.
|
| See for example Bret Devereux:
| https://acoup.blog/2020/03/20/collections-why-dont-we-
| use-ch...
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > Surely the individual decision-makers are, as with all
| human beings, averse to a world swarming with killer robots.
|
| The history of the use of land and sea mines in warfare
| suggests to me that this is not a universal we can assume.
| all2 wrote:
| > there is complete consensus on not wanting a world
| dominated by killer robots.
|
| That and nukes. It is ok to not want these things, but to
| survive as a nation state, these things will become necessary
| developments in order to survive. If GP is correct about some
| of the capabilities we're likely to see, then any nation
| state without these will need to begin development in order
| to ensure survival. Is that an arms race waiting to happen?
| Yes. Is there a better way? No. The alternative to an
| escalating arms race is actual war.
|
| We will never be done with power hungry ideologues, we will
| never be done with Communists whose sole mission is dominion
| over the whole world, we will never be done with petty
| despots (looking at you, Putin) who so wish they could play a
| meaningful role on the world stage. All of these have every
| reason to develop a new super weapon to tilt the balance of
| power in their favor.
|
| Iran, for example, has started its centrifuges again. They
| also have some new ones that spin at 10x the speed of their
| old ones. They are very close to possessing a nuclear bomb.
| Up until the end of the Trump presidency they had halted
| production of uranium and talks were going well. Biden has
| about the weakest foreign policy of any president in the last
| half century.
|
| Part of that effective foreign policy is the military might
| the US has. ( _Why do we have 5 carrier battle groups? Why
| does Britain only have one? Why does Russia have a single
| carrier that 's in rather poor repair?_)
|
| If killer drones are an effective war-fighting tool (an it
| appears they are), they are inevitable. What we need to
| ensure is that they are used as humanely as possible.
| jMyles wrote:
| > That and nukes.
|
| Yeah, good point. But I can absolutely envision - without
| much difficulty - a megatons-to-megawatts motion swiftly
| bringing an end to this period in Earth's history.
|
| And more generally: maintenance of arsenals of weapons of
| mass destruction is _very_ costly. Economics of energy
| production and storage are perhaps a viable mechanism to
| add pressure in favor of disarmament.
|
| > (Why do we have 5 carrier battle groups? Why does Britain
| only have one? Why does Russia have a single carrier that's
| in rather poor repair?)
|
| We can also summarize questions of stagnant geopolitical
| asymmetry this way:
|
| How long will the internet abide states as nodes of
| economic and social standing?
|
| Trying to shoehorn a previous world order into an
| information age society seems like a colossal waste of time
| in service of nostalgia.
| all2 wrote:
| > nostalgia.
|
| Nostalgia does not guarantee me personal autonomy.
| Neither does it guarantee me a right to self defense. Nor
| does it guarantee a free practice of religion, free
| press, or a right of association.
|
| Ensuring the survival of a nation state that adheres to
| the US Constitution will guarantee those things.
|
| > How long will the internet abide states as nodes of
| economic and social standing?
|
| Take a look at China and their authoritarian take on "the
| internet". "The internet", that is the masses that make
| it up, do what they're told, consume what they are
| allowed to consume, demonize those they are told they
| should demonize. Goebbels would be jealous of the machine
| the modern world has developed.
| jMyles wrote:
| > Nostalgia does not guarantee me personal autonomy.
| Neither does it guarantee me a right to self defense. Nor
| does it guarantee a free practice of religion, free
| press, or a right of association.
|
| > Ensuring the survival of a nation state that adheres to
| the US Constitution will guarantee those things.
|
| This is _precisely_ the uncultured nostalgia I'm
| suggesting is unworthy of our defenses.
|
| I absolutely support your right to bear arms in your
| defense. To be free in your religious exercise and
| associations and speech and press, and in the security of
| your effects again intrusion.
|
| But the US is not, as you say, a nation state that
| adheres to the US Constitution in any broad and universal
| sense.
|
| We have two million people living in cages. Five million
| more living under supervision of a system of slavery
| rebranded as carceral rehabilitation. Drugs and medicines
| and sacraments subject to capricious regulation at best,
| and often outright prohibition. Fiat currency. Arms which
| are practical as tools of self-defense unavailable to a
| quarter of the population.
|
| And I'm not sure that anybody other than (some) white men
| have _ever_ had these things securely in their civic
| possession.
|
| So the question is: _can_ a state be the bearer of
| insurance for these things? Especially now? Why can't we
| protect each other? Engage in commerce regulated (which
| is to say, made regular) by the internet alone? I have no
| idea what the benefits are of the continued existence of
| the US State, but the downsides are absolutely evident
| and very real on a daily basis.
|
| > Take a look at China and their authoritarian take on
| "the internet".
|
| I take your point, absolutely. But doesn't China and the
| Great Firewall also provide us with an example of failure
| of authoritarian tendencies as they apply to the
| internet?
|
| May 35th lives on largely as an internet meme. The
| official truth may dominate in circles where it can be
| violently maintained, but those shrink in the face of
| connectivity, no?
| dotnet00 wrote:
| I think you're forgetting that the only thing the
| internet does is make communication easy. The material
| realities of where we live, our cultures and belief
| systems determine how we split into groups like
| countries.
|
| So while the internet certainly enables us to be more
| connected as a species, it doesn't eliminate what makes
| having nations a valuable construct for human societies.
| As long as our physical environment matters, nations or
| similar constructs will be around.
| RobRivera wrote:
| I think people may sometimes forget thag, so far as 95%
| of the population goes, the internet is still a
| communication and commerce channels, with endpoints in
| meatspace. some endpoints are in liberal democracy, some
| in totalitarian regime. to overthrow the latter you need
| revolution or nationstate interference.
|
| Policy change-politik-is a function of political will and
| political efficacy.
|
| the internet is just an information conduit, end of day
| joconde wrote:
| > I can absolutely envision - without much difficulty - a
| megatons-to-megawatts motion swiftly bringing an end to
| this period in Earth's history.
|
| I can't figure out if you're talking about a nuclear war
| changing the world, or a nuclear disarmament process that
| somehow also leads to energy production.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| I found the rest of jMyles' comment equally baffling. My
| advise to people is to talk as simply and clearly as you
| can.
| jMyles wrote:
| > I can't figure out if you're talking about a nuclear
| war changing the world, or a nuclear disarmament process
| that somehow also leads to energy production.
|
| My apologies - the latter.
| drekk wrote:
| I see the Cold War never ended in the US. The communists
| you're decrying engaged 80% of the German army and were
| responsible for 7/10s of Nazi deaths on that front.
|
| It wasn't the USSR that dropped two nuclear bombs (one
| uranium, one plutonium) on Japanese civilian targets when
| the Japanese were willing to surrender on the sole
| condition that they keep their emperor (a religious figure)
|
| In the name of "stopping the spread of communism" the US
| overthrew popularly-elected governments, sent death squads
| into Latin America, and killed millions of civilians
| besides the ones they permanently maimed. This is besides
| the typical "make their economy scream" that kills
| civilians as well, in a way harder to quantify. Cuba is
| still the victim of this decades after the failed Bay of
| Pigs.
|
| We have technically been in a state of emergency since the
| 50s with the undeclared Korean War, and for what? The
| permanent wartime economy hasn't benefited anyone besides
| the military-industrial complex. American imperial designs
| in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Yemen, Syria, etc. were
| all enabled by this escalation mentality and the crimes
| against humanity that were committed there are a permanent
| stain on humanity
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| > _the Japanese were willing to surrender on the sole
| condition that they keep their emperor_
|
| Heh, that's quite the narrative.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ky%C5%ABj%C5%8D_incident
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > It is ok to not want these things, but to survive as a
| nation state, these things will become necessary
| developments in order to survive.
|
| Yes, exactly.
|
| > If killer drones are an effective war-fighting tool (an
| it appears they are), they are inevitable.
|
| I have come to the same conclusion.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| I'd argue against virtually all the points you make BUT you
| actually miss the main point of this:
|
| this is about making _autonomous_ decisions in the field beyond
| just local navigation and such. Your arguments hold for non-
| autonomous drones and autonomous ones to pretty much equal
| degree. But you don 't make any point about why humans
| shouldn't remain in control of combat decisions.
| PontifexMinimus wrote:
| > My quick guess is US, China, Russia, EU (maybe), India as
| places with enough capacity for this type of next gen
| battlefield?
|
| Turkey has already developed their own autonomous killer drones
| (which have in fact killed people, in Libya). So any country
| with their GDP and level of technology probably could too.
|
| According to Wikipedia, Turkey has the 20th largest economy,
| and 72nd by per capita GDP. So a lot of countries could develop
| this technology if they wanted to.
| WFHRenaissance wrote:
| I wonder what group will succumb to genocide by drone first? I
| figure once you solve the computer vision problem of identifying
| a group, it's pretty much just an ammunition logistics problem.
| Imagine The Holocaust without trains and queues. Just a matter of
| time until another leader needs to scapegoat another group, and
| next time it will be easier than it's ever been.
| sebow wrote:
| And who expected a different result?
|
| No shit... people with power will keep a door available for this
| technology as a tool to use on dissidents.
| BrazzVuvuzela wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_60_CAPTOR
|
| A CAPTOR mine sits underwater listening to nearby ships or
| submarines, for weeks to months. If it hears the right sort of
| ship, it can launch itself autonomously, track it and kill it,
| without a human in the loop. It's been in service since the 70s.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| Autonomous weapons don't worry me. There isn't anything they can
| do that a human controlled weapon cannot do. Most of these
| autonomous weapons are basically just a different vehicle
| bringing the payload to the target.
|
| For example, let's say there is a bomb that can be strapped to a
| drone with a camera on it and guided by AI. That would be easy to
| evade by just staying out of the open. I'd be much more afraid of
| my entire city being killed by chemical weapons.
|
| Facial recognition technology will not be a huge game-changer.
| Most weapons don't even bother to recognize your face to
| determine if you're a friend or a foe, they just kill you.
|
| Real world autonomous weapons have existed for a long time. The
| phalanx CIWS is an example of an autonomous weapon designed in
| the late 60s and it is far from perfect. They tend to just start
| randomly spraying bullets when they get confused, and they have
| been involved in friendly fire incidents.
| schroeding wrote:
| > There isn't anything they can do that a human controlled
| weapon cannot do
|
| Yes, there is: They don't require human operators, which are a
| limited ressource. You can only operate so many drones at the
| same time until you run out of weapon operators / "pilots".
|
| You can't scale human operated weapons in the same way you can
| autonomous ones, can you? There is nothing stopping you from
| using hundreds of thousands of cheap, autonomous kamikaze
| drones at the same time, 24 / 7, if you have the money for it.
|
| > That would be easy to evade by just staying out of the open.
|
| How long can you stay in one building? How long could a drone
| (or two, with one recharging while the other is flying) circle
| above it?
|
| Bombing a whole city with chemical weapons, killing countless
| civilians would cause a major international incident, even with
| countries not involved in the war / conflict. Killing single
| individuals with "killer drones" based on AI facial recognition
| will probably not :/
| Msw242 wrote:
| You could have one human run a mostly automated squadron.
| That's a huge reduction in staffing
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| > You can't scale human operated weapons in the same way you
| can autonomous ones, can you?
|
| Sure you can. That's what the whole point of an army is.
| Instead of just having just one tank, have 500 tanks. Sure,
| scaling does require more manpower, but that's true even with
| autonomous weapons until someone invents AGI.
|
| > How long can you stay in one building? How long could a
| drone (or two, with one recharging while the other is flying)
| circle above it?
|
| Just put a ski mask on. Problem solved. There is just no way
| that drone swarms with facial recognition technology are ever
| going to be viable.
| black_puppydog wrote:
| > There isn't anything they can do that a human controlled
| weapon cannot do.
|
| For me it's not so much about what they can/cannot do, but what
| they will/will not do.
| dirtyid wrote:
| Only a handful of countries are capable of developing killer
| robots to maturity and they will end up monopolizing the arms
| trade market. The tech will proliferate for this reason alone.
|
| If AI is integral to killer drones, then expect a lot more
| skirmishes going forward to gather data. And realistically
| there's only a handful of countries / powerblocks who has the
| impunity to conduct such "research". And when you narrow
| perquisites down account for synergy with domestic AI industry,
| that elite club dwindles even smaller. US, PRC, EU if she gets
| her shit together.
|
| But IMO killer robots along with developments like prompt global
| strike will trigger dreadnaught tier shift in resetting global
| power dynamic. Arms race dilemma 101, countries that can, simply
| can't afford not to pursue them.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Will the killer bots be any smarter than contemporary robotic
| admins that delete posts and lock accounts on Facebook?
|
| If not, the first casualty of the next war in the Middle East
| will be the closest Department of Algebra, because the name
| sounds Arabic.
|
| I wish I was joking. The potential for bad decisions in such
| autonomous systems is tremendous.
| ProjectArcturis wrote:
| How can you possibly expect to regulate something like that?
| Every world power expects that the next major war will be fought
| with autonomous robots playing a big role. Whoever has the better
| technology will have a huge advantage. Consequently you can never
| trust that the other signatories will honor their promises, and
| so in turn you cannot risk signing it yourself.
|
| Like the Geneva Convention, any robot agreement will be ignored
| by all combatants as soon as it serves their purposes. War cannot
| be regulated by gentlemen's agreement.
| jrochkind1 wrote:
| Have bans on chemical weapons been completely useless, might as
| well get rid of them all too?
|
| Or nuclear non-proliferation?
|
| Certainly have not been entirely succesful, but I wouldn't want
| to get rid of them.
|
| As with chemical weapons, they'll still exist, and they'll
| still be used. But getting the most powerful nations to agree
| that they are unacceptable and their use has consequences in
| the international community matters for whether they quickly
| become pervasive. Vs. allowing the US and Russian defense
| industries to be in a race to equip the entire world with them
| as quickly as possible.
| jMyles wrote:
| I much prefer that the state which capriciously claims dominion
| over the land mass on which I happen to exist today should lose
| a war with one of its childish rivals than to acquire and
| advance more deadly toys.
|
| It may not be a gentlemen's agreement, but it's something with
| which I imagine there are broad consensus across borders.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| So basically you don't even value your own life? Is that
| really the basis of your argument? You don't even try to
| argue "More deadly weapons are not neccessary for our
| survival," you just straight up concede "I'm OK with losing
| the war and having everyone get killed." Good for you, but
| the rest of us want to survive.
| jMyles wrote:
| I think it's pretty obvious for those of us living in
| places "governed" by superpowers that the international
| affairs of state in which they are currently engaged have
| no bearing on our individual longevity.
|
| The USA state will fall eventually. Will it be in 500
| years? 100? 20? Nobody knows for sure. But the fall will
| cause the end (or even substantial disruption) of a tiny
| portion of the lives of the people living in the regime's
| claimed territory.
|
| I don't fault your logic; I just think it's out-of-date.
| The world (especially those parts of it we're discussing
| here) is really quite different than in the 19th century.
| Very little of the original impetus for the state
| (specifically, solving problems of coordination created by
| the absence of established communications across the land-
| mass, as a non-trivial portion of The Federalist Papers
| seek to resolve) remains.
|
| In other words; we'll be fine. We won't merely survive.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| > I think it's pretty obvious for those of us living in
| places "governed" by superpowers that the international
| affairs of state in which they are currently engaged have
| no bearing on our individual longevity.
|
| Wars generally have a deleterious effect to the life
| expectancy of the civilian population, even more so in
| the modern era of mechanized warfare where attacking
| civilian targets at scale is both practical and practiced
| (usually not by countries that respect the Geneva
| conventions, but (a) one cannot guarantee that their
| opponent will be one of those countries and (b) even
| those countries have been known to set aside parts of
| those conventions when they perceive either existential
| threat or expedience).
|
| No, I don't find it likely at all that most people I know
| live through a hot war on home soil.
| JoeyBananas wrote:
| You think that security and prosperity is inevitable, but
| it's really not. World war 2 was less than 100 years ago.
| There are plenty of people still alive who remember being
| drafted for Vietnam. There is a 100% chance that there
| will be another major war at some point. Overall, I fail
| to see your point.
| gameman144 wrote:
| I'm curious why you assume this. Genocides have largely
| been limited by human logistics, time, and labor. Given
| an enormous quantity of morally agnostic and
| incorruptible autonomous soldiers, why are you so sure
| that complete genocide would be _less_ likely?
| dvlsadvoxate6 wrote:
| I'm going to "agree" but put my own spin on it
|
| So we avert drone war and consume our way off the
| environment cliff? Or die before but leave the sludge for
| the future?
|
| I mean, front row seats to heterogeneous droid swarm
| mayhem sounds fun.
|
| An "I love my job, disposable consumerism, to prop up
| other peoples grandparents imagined value to society when
| many in my family got fucked" is not really helping the
| "but my American civic life story!" crowd. When it was
| decided in the 80s business taxes were too high, so sad.
| So is your so called net worth.
|
| Paraphrasing Thomas Jefferson; the dead do not rule the
| living.
|
| Madisonian philosophy is that we do.
|
| But Jefferson saw servicing generational story of debt as
| the whole problem in human history.
|
| Adam Smith also agreed; he wrote the powers that be would
| need insure equality of condition to avoid manipulation
| of a free labor market (the only market he wrote of).
|
| Somehow we just get Madisonian policy and tall tails of
| success in a gender and race biased recent history.
|
| If the US wants respect and drone weapons it's culture
| should have to prove it's as capable of behaving
| responsibly as any other.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| People think of terminators when they hear killer drones, but the
| cat has been out of the bag for a long time. We've already had
| Killer Robots for many decades.
|
| It started with icbm's in the 1950s. More sophisticated platforms
| like the US the US tamohawk missile have been around since the
| 80s.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| They don't choose their targets and until relatively recently
| couldn't be retargeted after deployment.
| blunte wrote:
| It doesn't matter if they regulate it or not. It will happen in
| secret. It is a foolish hedge, as the nuclear race was.
|
| Fortunately, despite the Deepminds and such, outside limited
| games we humans still have the upper hand. And us techies, with
| some effort, can not only defeat killer robots, but we can
| adversely affect or even control them.
|
| Considering the many woes of humanity, and the inevitable doom we
| face, I find this an interesting endgame to play. At least now we
| have something interesting to do while the world burns.
| Ultimatt wrote:
| Just for context this is what they are "debating" saying yes or
| no to https://youtu.be/TlO2gcs1YvM
| thwarted wrote:
| This should have ended with the guy on stage getting attacked
| by a drone deployed by an unknown party, to really drive home
| the lack of defense against this kind of technology.
| daveac wrote:
| Have a listen to this guys lecture on AI and warfare. He explains
| why we should not fear Skynet instead explains machines capable
| of selecting targets / people and automatically deciding who
| should die, their cheep mass production, state of current
| progress and ways of controlling their use if this needs done.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00127t9
|
| It's really up to date to as he is also delivering a message to
| those at the UN talks today
| daveac wrote:
| https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2021/06/03/wo...
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