When we often look at drones and the advent of AI and the fear of automated killing drones but lets take another perspective. AI that assists in preventing innocents being killed. Still manually controlled but an AI to override hostile action when it deems it wrong. We all focus upon AI to identify and select targets, but an AI to help identify and prevent innocents being impacted - surely that approach would be a worthy goal?
After all - no military want's collateral damage.
The worst part about the use of drones is not the collateral killing of civilians and their children; if done far away it has in the long run next to zero impact on the perception of the war among the attackers families.
By using drones, the attackers are safe; their families won't mourn their beloved ones who won't return back from war zone, therefore they won't experience what war really is about, which has nothing to do with heroism and defending the homeland and other propagandistic idiocy commonly depicted in war movies.
Every country should count their losses after a war, including winners. If we take away that, we eliminate the number one thing that can discourage the creation of an eternal state of war, so all is left is 100% business, which is something the weapons industry and their elected puppets in charge would absolutely love.
One would say: why isnt Afghanistan sending drones to Phoenix or San Diego? What led to this country / group of combattant to be so behind.
Im French and I live in China with a child born here. The two militaries I paid taxes to maintain are able to find ways to resist US aggression to a point where it would become really painful to treat us like they treated Afghanistan, and we are just as old as Afghanistan.
At some point, these people need to move their asses and at least ask for our help. We understand the US is a huge threat to most of us, we're ready to help, if only you make simple compromises.
But no, they ll spend their time in teenage wet dream, exploiting their population, provocking America before being ready to resist them. So they take the drone and we roll our eyes - how can people in 2021 be so blind to how to build a country...
It's not a worthy goal, because that's not how it's ever going to be fielded. The West has always used its tech to attack entities with far less resources and far less ability to strike back. So the end result is that we use tech to kill more people "because the computer said so". The kids in this article were killed over a radio, not something that is uncommon in Afghanistan and would probably culminate in whole villages being wiped out.
Even in cases where they would want as few casualties as possible, I believe no military would want some "pos tech" telling them what to do (and especially what not to do).
So whilst the step towards automated weapons of destruction does seem inevitable, there is clearly more acceptance of weapons for preventing lives ending unfairly already.
The problem is that you imagine that the AI will have the final word, but I imagine that the drone operator will have two button. One to launch the missile and another to override the AI block. And they will just get use to press the two buttons just in case.
On the other hand, AI can be used to identify possible targets, and the drone operator must just click to confirm the strike. The risk is that it's possible to combine an AI with a low threshold to report possible cases and internal rules that encourage drone operators just to confirm any AI report.
Yes, many do seem to worry about AI more than nuclear weapons - more so if they even cross streams so too speak.
But I do wonder how much of things are driven by worst case hoilloywood visualsations of things. Certainly the whole cold war and peoples mentalities, was very much media driven from the fear aspect. Will AI share the same and will we get to the stage that we see anti AI groups form and the term and history of Luddite gets revised!
Certainly many worry's, but also opportunities. Certainly don't want any AI working out a way to game Asimov's rules of robotics.
As the first generation to grow up in freedom after Salazar's dictatorship, having family members fighting in the colonial wars, and knowing enough from PIDE/DGS deeds, I am quite aware how worst cases turn into reality.
I bet HNers with similar life experiences can confirm.
You do have a point, but note how some predictions have come true. We have a real 1984 going on with only real difference being hashtags along the lines of "omg. room 101. emoji_here".
