Anybody else sees a problem with training the AI to move troops around a battlefield, with the purpose to exterminate the opponent?
Starcraft isn't troops on the battlefield, in the same way that Risk, the boardgame isn't troops on the battlefield.
Just because the 1s and 0s or game pieces represent "troops" to humans, doesn't mean that the underlying game mechanics have anything at all to do with a real war.
For all we know, the problems solved by a monopoly AI, are more applicable to a real war than those solved by a Risk or starcraft AI.
An AI doesn't know or care about any of this. Literally its applying statistics to optimize a cost function or assign labels to input states. These numbers could represent number of kills or number of dollars; the computer doesn't care.
It's just absentmindedly optimizing a cold value function! No more humanity! More more external input! Just cold machine logic!
We've doomed ourselves!!!!
But seriously. No, there is nothing inherent about an AI maximizing wins in StarCraft than one maximizing profits on the stock exchange. Although I feel like there's a bunch of Sci-Fi where this obviously goes awry.
Similarly, algorithms used to detect cancer in medical imaging can be used to do automatic targeting on killer drones. Should we stop doing research altogether?
The commenter I was responding to has strong ideas about it however, so I wanted to provide the opportunity for an explanation.
How do you propose that ban be enforced?
Having a spine has nothing to do with it.
The limits of our ability to think a global scale are an issue, we still have a tribe mentality, this discussion demonstrates that. "The Chinese, The British etc"
We still think in terms of tribes, but we have technology change the world. Until we evolve some more we're probably not fit to wield more and more powerful weapons.
It would be good if we could stop worrying about weaponry all together and focus on real issues like deforestation, poverty, pollution of the sea, climate change etc.
The only way I can see an agreement to limit the escalation of AI warfare is on the same context we saw the START treaty: once the weapons are developed by at least two key players as "deterrent" there's an incentive to reach an agreement to stop further development.
Call me cynical, but if this election has shown me anything is how tiny-minded people still command an inordinate amount of power in this country.
Legends trace the origin of the game to the mythical Chinese emperor Yao (2337–2258 BC), who was said to have had his counselor Shun design it for his unruly son, Danzhu, to favorably influence him.[64] Other theories suggest that the game was derived from Chinese tribal warlords and generals, who used pieces of stone to map out attacking positions.[65][66]
Of course, I doubt that an AI commander would replace a human making the actual decisions in the foreseeable future. It would just be another intelligence tool for military command. From this point of view you are essentially arguing for our military to be ignorant, I don't think that is a good bet.