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Comment by FBT | Hacker News Reader

That's better than both sides being humans.

Seriously. Incremental improvements are worthwhile.

In general, militaries never want to comprise their effectiveness. So if given the chance to implement a life-saving intervention that harms their effectiveness, they will be reluctant at best to implement it. But this is a life-saving intervention that possibly even increases their effectiveness!

That's what truly makes it awesome. A way to save lives that militaries are not only willing to implement, but rather are actually enthusiastic about implementing.

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That's a best case scenario. What it could do is make military intervention an even easier decision. The loss of human life is a deterrent to engaging in war. If one side isn't concerned about that, wouldn't they be more inclined to go to war?

Conversely removing the threat to human life may reduce the probability of escalation and make a response more measured.

For example two men break through a security fence. A robotic patrol would seem to be much less likely to respond with deadly force than a human patrol would in that situation.

If the men were refugees or wounded soilders looking for medical care the more measured response of the robotic patrol may prevent a death and actually de-escalate conflict.

Also assume that the two men were hostile and fired on the patrol. The destruction of the mech is much less likely to provoke a political and civilian response than the death of a human and may lead to a more measured response.

My bigger concern is that a fully mechanized force may decrease the apparent cost of oppressing a civilian population.

That would never happen...

Drone operators refer to children as “fun-size terrorists” and liken killing them to “cutting the grass before it grows too long,” said one of the operators, Michael Haas, a former senior airman in the Air Force

https://theintercept.com/2015/11/19/former-drone-operators-s...

Yeah, just let a Hitler like guy (or Trump), have control over a massive robot army.

We always assume, that the technology always stays with the good guys.

This stuff is literally a dictators wet dream.

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