U.S. DoD needs “immediate action” to win the AI war
readwrite.com
readwrite.com
>There is no need to solve the long-term AI problem of general intelligence in order to build high-value applications that exploit limited-scope autonomous capabilities dedicated to specific purposes.
I'd argue that statement is inclusive of robotic infantry. We already have self-driving cars, so the prospect is not that far-fetched.
I doubt we are that close. Recognizing road signs and making judgement calls on the above are not the same order of magnitude of complexity.
Remotely controlled infantry, that would be more realistic.
On the contrary, self-driving vehicles go far beyond merely "recognizing road signs", and must make life and death judgement calls themselves.
Recognizing a person holding a weapon is already in the realm of current machine vision capability. In an environment where robotic infantry is deployed, it's not a stretch to imagine friendly forces possessing equipment to facilitate friend/foe identification.
Moreover, robotic infantry doesn't necessarily have to be lethal in the first place.
(please no one do this.)
It's already being done, minus the IFF beacon. Just being in the general vicinity of some other person is enough to get murdered, no need for 'friendlies' (what a term) to go there at all.
These are some interesting questions, I have to admit.
Or to change your question - is it ethical to use civilians to maneuver around the killer robots who do not shoot at non-combatants? No, it's not, but it doesn't matter - because if your robots have such limitation, your opponent will surely exploit it to defeat you.
This is begging the question. The fact that some conflicts are waged with ROE shows that they're still self-imposed rule in at least some wars.
Hasn't that question been answered already, over and over again? You don't, not really. Also: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11685995
We already have autonomous weapons, their called mines. Even these can be somewhat targetable, in particular with antivehicle mines.
The most immediately plausible development in autonomous weapons I've read is in anti-shipping and anti-radiation missles. Israeli Areospace new anti-radiation weapon is a loitering drone than can autonomously target fire control radars.[0] Lockheed's new LRASM[1] is designed to loiter in an area and automatically identify and target enemy ships within an area. However, it right now asks for permission to conduct the attack. So we're just a firmware upgrade from fully autonomous with that weapon.
In both these cases, autonomous weapons aren't really troublesome. Fire control radars send out a very different signal than civilian radars, and so are explicitly a military target. Furthermore even civilian radar could be considered a legitimate target if you don't want to be observed at all, as opposed to be seen but impossible to shoot down.
Antishipping historically has explicitly allowed targeting of both military and civilian ships. So just as long as you can identify the vessel as not being yours using an electrolytically sensors, it's permissible to sink it.
The real problem with autonomous weapons tend to be when their deployed on land, especially when civilians are around. In the sea, and in the air even, there's no one around.
[0] http://defense-update.com/20160215_loitering-weapons.html
[1] http://www.scout.com/military/warrior/story/1634058-navy-wea...
By this logic, our ancestors were using autonomous weapons too, since they invented various traps.
And those autonomous weapons keep on killing and maiming people for a long time, whether the orignial conflict continues or not. The squeamishness does not seem to have quite disappeared either, judging from the fact that much of the world has comdended and opted to forgo their use. [1]
No, you have to positively identify it as your enemy's.
Next you'll being saying false flags[0] and arming civilian[1] ships are war crimes. Again, they're not.
The squeamishness around chemical, biological, nuclear weapons and expanding bullets didn't disappear. How do we know that fully autonomous weapons won't be categorised alongside them?