Ethical Terminators
I love a good turn of phrase, and “ethical terminators” makes a good turn of phrase. It belongs with the joke about “military intelligence” being an oxymoron. The DomPost reported on this article from the Telegraph today. In an effort to reduce the incidence of war crimes, the US is hiring specialists to help give their new generation of autonomous weapons systems a sense of ethics and a respect for the Geneva Conventions. This is something that the Pentagon concedes is difficult to achieve with mere mortal soldiers, who have a tendency to behave badly under the stress of war.
Colin Allen, a scientific philosopher at Indiana University’s has just published a book summarising his views entitled Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong.
He told The Daily Telegraph: “The question they want answered is whether we can build automated weapons that would conform to the laws of war. Can we use ethical theory to help design these machines?”
Pentagon chiefs are concerned by studies of combat stress in Iraq that show high proportions of frontline troops supporting torture and retribution against enemy combatants.
Ronald Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech university, who is working on software for the US Army has written a report which concludes robots, while not “perfectly ethical in the battlefield” can “perform more ethically than human soldiers.”
He says that robots “do not need to protect themselves” and “they can be designed without emotions that cloud their judgement or result in anger and frustration with ongoing battlefield events”.
First hand experience of battlefield stress leaves me none the wiser regarding the development of ethical terminators. I will say this though. Just the thought that some Pentagon desk jockey would consider ethics at all in the development of high-tech weaponry gives me just a glimmer of hope.
Had they considered the ethics of Roundup Ready GE corn and canola before unleashing them upon the entire continent of North America, the US and Canadian family farm might still exist.
Had they considered the ethics of cluster bombs before they spread them across Afghanistan, Iraq and southern Lebanon, the global economy wouldn’t now be losing billions in lives, lost productivity and cleanup.
Had they considered the ethics of depleted uranium weapons before using them in the Gulf War and the Iraq War, the global economy wouldn’t be facing the billions in health costs for both Iraqi and American civilians and military personnel.
I think if we spent the time to consider the ethics of terminator genes for food crops, we wouldn’t need to spend any time debating an international convention on how to manage them. They’d be gone.
I have grave doubts that the US will succeed in instilling their autonomous weaponry with a sense of ethics. But I do welcome the attempt. I would welcome any attempt to instil a sense of ethics back into the world of political discourse, which has been over run by the amoral dictates of the “free market”.
The T-800 from the Terminator films
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:00 pm
Ethical war ………. ethical murder.
The way modern war works is that far far more civilians die than sodiers or combatants
This is why people like Bush with their ‘war on terror’ end up killing far more woman and children than terrorist’s.
……. and they know thant before they go in.
War criminals .
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
daddO - while I agree with everything you said, I don’t think modern warfare is much different from previous and ancient wars. Civilians, men, women and children have always been the largest casualty of war, IMHO. We just do it today with bigger weapons on bigger populations than we used to, but I reckon it’s all relative. We have much bigger populations these days upon which to project our hate.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:33 pm
“This is why people like Bush with their ‘war on terror’ end up killing far more woman and children than terrorist’s.”
Yeah, lets leave the terrorists to blow up innocent people and crash planes into buildings.
People like you make me sick daddyO.
December 2nd, 2008 at 4:37 pm
While i disagree with the use of cluster munitions and fissile munitions in the big scheme of things, loosing those lifes due to the after effects of their deployment is probally a desirable thing, all things considered, due to the overall decrease in the rate of population increase thus affected.
As for the family farm, I think that has much more to do with american domestic policy and the desire for ever cheaper food than with the introduction of GE crops, though that said; monsanto doing what it does certainly does not help. The ethics of terminator genes isint quite so clear cut as you would express eaither, though the ethics of terminator genes for the third-world farmer is substantially more so.
Designing AI ethics for robots? That is one project that is right in my area of interest but one i wouldint touch with a barge pole; you design one that is ethical and it gets shot to peices or never accheives anything, you design one that isint and your on trial; you loose eaither way. We humans cannot even agree on ethics, i mean to say i just finished the transcript of a debate between a feminist whom opposes the notions of boas and considers ethics to be universal and as something that we should impose on others (very ethnocentric) and a real anthropologist whom embraces the notions of boas and beleives that ethics is part of culture and thus varies between culture; its ovious which i support. lol. My point being, ethics is subjective, that and i detest humanists whom call themselves scientists
December 2nd, 2008 at 7:31 pm
So big bro is still going along with the fairy tale that Bush invaded Iraq as part of the ‘war on terror’ ………………….. What a joke.
Be sick on yourself.
And when leaders or presidents start wars for false dishonest reasons then they are a criminal in my eyes ……………
And Frog I cant remember where I first read about how modern warfare kills the civilians and innocents at a far greater rate than old warfare but an example could be when William the conquerer invaded england it was all over after one battle between the two armys.
Even in WW1 the soldiers were the main ones dying.
In WW11 it was far worse for the non-combatants.
………… in the vietnam war MILLIONS of civilians were killed, ( that was the usa trying to bomb north vietnam into submission )
People who start wars should be shot ………………
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
“………… in the vietnam war MILLIONS of civilians were killed, ( that was the usa trying to bomb north vietnam into submission”
Or was it the “civilians” carrying AK 47’s ?
December 2nd, 2008 at 8:47 pm
Trouble with Vietnam was trying to identify who was the enemy.
December 3rd, 2008 at 3:48 pm
“WW11″, lol, by the time that gets around we would probally be using pitchforks and bows to fight wars :P, copper would be too expensive to use for bronze swords and wouldint have enough coal for steel. coulduse obsidian as the americas did though
December 3rd, 2008 at 5:08 pm
I dont know where you get your history from daddyO, but the US didn’t try and bomb the North into submission, they actually didn’t bomb any where near as much as in ww2 due to the defense department stopping most bombing missions due to costs.
December 3rd, 2008 at 7:29 pm
Can’t help thinking that an American definition of “ethics” will be as interesting as the American definition of “terrorism”.
Both arbitrary, dependent on what is perceived as being good for Uncle Sam.
December 4th, 2008 at 12:05 am
Ethical Termination changes in meaning according where and when you are born.
In Korea - they could tell not Nth from Sth civilians, so they killed the lot…ethical then - have a whisky Boris.
Vietnem - well, the peasants didn’t want slavery anymore - a mistake to fight people with nothing to lose, as people with everything to lose found out.
Modern Vets have the highest suicide rates because of what ‘modern weapons’ can do to those wedding parties….up close, it is humanities dirtiest work so far - even kills the perps.
Hmmm same game - new toys Frogg.
Any force that compells one to deal with a robot is inhuman by definition - those smart computers that want me to talk to them? Once removed - forever gone I say!
December 4th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Fact: Saddam killed more people than the second Bush Iraq war.
Fact: Terrorists in Iraq have killed more people than the Allied forces ever did, and many that the allied forces killed were terrorists.
I’ve read the books that suggest we should never have gone to war against Hitler. I was not impressed with their argument. Positing from hindsight offers many advantages, but it still doesn’t make it right to stay our of WWII.
December 4th, 2008 at 7:59 pm
How about the fact that the usa supported saddam when Iraq invaded Iran ? .
Or the fact that the country is now a non-functioning hell hole which will probably provide terrorists for generations to come ?
Or the fact the reasons for the invasion of Iraq were fearmongering and fraud ? .
And I dont know where turnip got his spin on the vietnam war but perhaps he always has his head buried in the ground ?????? .
The americans dropped so many bombs and munitions on vietnam that parts of the country had a lunar apperance ( craters ) .
They also supported Pol Pot and his murderous crew representing cambodia at the UN .
Because even though the khmer rouge ended up killing about one third of their countrys population they were an enemy of vietnam which was good enough for them to be friends and supported by the usa.
Just like Bin laden when he was fighting the russians.
And just like saddam when he was fighting Iran.
So we see a pattern of the usa supporting any butchers and murderers when they fight america’s battles by proxey.
………… and we can expect the supporters of mass murderer’s to make ‘ethical weapons ‘
…………… its like a sick monty python sketch
Because pol pot and the khmer rouge
December 4th, 2008 at 8:52 pm
DNA has released a scandalous number of US Citizens from Death Row.
Concomitant with that is the question of how many innocents whose lives have been taken by due process - and nobody is calling it terrorism. Acyually no one can even face it.
A life is a life is a life and them ‘Mericans gotta sweep they own backyard real soon…
Three strikes - Zero Tolerance - five million in jail?
Explain how good that is would you…..
December 4th, 2008 at 8:53 pm
ZenTiger Says:
December 4th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
> Fact: Saddam killed more people than the second Bush Iraq war.
That would be a valid argument in favour of the invasion of Iraq if he had actually been killing those people in killing sprees which were stopped by the invasion, because then you could say the invasion had stopped those killings. But the fact is, Saddam’s killing sprees were mostly from 1980 to 1991, and in all but one of those years he was actually supported by the United States government.
There were people being killed in Iraq in the 12 years between the Kuwait war and the 2003 invasion, but the US and the UK bear at least as much responsibility for that as Saddam did. Most of the deaths were due to the sanctions - the international community could have stopped this by lifting the sanctions, and Saddam could have stopped it by changing his government’s reaction to the sanctions. The rest of the deaths were due to the US and the UK bombing the country.
The invasion did not stop anyone being killed, it only led to lots more people being killed.
> Fact: Terrorists in Iraq have killed more people than the Allied forces ever did, and many that the allied forces killed were terrorists.
Fact: Al Qaeda had no foothold in Iraq until the US invaded, and the Shiite Militias weren’t causing any mayhem either. The US invaded when Iraq was relatively peaceful, despite it being widely predicted that their invasion would enable terrorists to become active in Iraq. Therefore, they bear a significant degree of responsibility for this having happened.
December 4th, 2008 at 8:56 pm
Hey frog, there’s lots more to it than that, did you know that the Pentagon have commissioned a “Multi-Robot Pursuit System” that will let packs of robots “search for and detect a non-cooperative human”?
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2008/10/packs-of-r obots-will-hunt-down.html
yes, lets build autonomous robots and arm them … what could possibly go wrong!
perhaps we should try to make friends with the robots so that when they turn on humans they don’t shoot us!
http://www.twis.org/audio/2006CD/Robots_Are_Great.mp3