Comments on: Ethical Implications of Robots in War

By: the real cmf

the real cmf — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:42:29 +0000

So ethics are merely an algorhithm then?

By: phill

phill — Tue, 26 Feb 2008 22:39:44 +0000

Sorry, but I really struggle with the concept of “the ethical use of lethal force”, it just seems sort of unethical to kill people…

By: Mac

Mac — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 21:20:40 +0000

Dennis: We already use robots in war. (google: “predator uav” for an example) Ok they are not autonomous and they don’t have ethical intelligence, but they do quite a bit of butt-kicking that is not trumpeted very publicly.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:07:00 +0000

And the women who have to do the work of it, of course.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:05:11 +0000

Ah, yes, I should have chosen my words more carefully. I meant the suits who decide to go to war; not the men who actually have to do the work of it.

By: Greg Laden

Greg Laden — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:58:27 +0000

I agree completely except this: The men who wage war … in the field … generally would prefer not to.

By: Dennis

Dennis — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 16:29:59 +0000

With robots doing the fighting, though, one has to ask, “What is war good for, then?” (And I’m very much of the “not much” camp to begin with, but that’s irrelevant.)Seriously, isn’t the point of war to hurt the other guys? And I don’t mean the Fox News/Pentagon justification for war; I mean the real reason. The reason that Billy Bob in Texarkana supports war. Any war. There’s a certain subset of the population who start whooping and hollering in delight at the merest mention of war, and you know they do so merely because they’re thrilled at the thought of our boys getting to “kick a little ass.”The men who wage war know this, and for that reason they’ll never let it happen. They know their base simply won’t be able to get it up at the thought of robots doing the ass-kicking.

By: Flaky

Flaky — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 15:42:47 +0000

The way I see it, fully automated robots would behave more ethically than humans, since they don’t have sexual urges and only sense of self preservation is dictated by the requirement to maintain operational capability. I.e. you wouldn’t see robots raping and murdering civilians and shooting randomly when feeling threatened.