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Comment by djohnston | Hacker News Reader

I mean he's right. Autonomous weapons are inevitable, anyone who thinks the other side isn't building these is kidding themselves.

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I've never understood the commonly expressed idea that if the end of the world seems inevitable that it is therefore logical to work towards it.

Why not...just not? And see what happens? We're all guaranteed to die anyway, so what is there to lose? It's not rational to bet on the end of the world in any possible situation.

I'm having similar thoughts a lot recently, which are far from original to me, yet I am disturbed by all the people who apparently don't have them.

Like, the richest guy in the world cares about union busting and tax breaks at the moment, but why? I literally can't imagine anything he can gain from being a bastard at this point, and so I can't even get viscerally angry. It's more like contemplating the mysteries of a tornado. What the hell makes it go and what would stop it?

Except that they don't see it as the end of the world but rather a guaranteed cost when someone considers an invasion.

And as far as I know, autonomous weapons don't inherently involve scorched earth scenarios. Perhaps in the far future the worst war we have will be each side attacking the other's autonomous weapons and then calling a ceasefire because humans are too costly to be in the frontlines.

I have the opposite viewpoint, in that I think the one real leap autonomous weapons represent is that they can be programmed to treat human and any other life as even less valuable than the most depraved psychopath would, and therefore can terminate any amount in a very short time without asking for a reason.

I would agree that these weapons should be out of the hands of the average civilian gunowner and put in the hands of say, army commanders. But then you already have the civilian gunowners who dont go through regular psyche tests no?

When people aren't dying in the front lines because it's just robots, there's no reason for a ceasefire. There won't be a human cost to fighting, only for running out of money and losing.

In some manner, pursuing a strategy that allows you to end the world allows you to stave off ending the world.

Think of it through the lens of an iterated prisoner's dilemma: if I suddenly develop deathbots and you don't have them, it changes the payoffs for defection/cooperation which could cause me to change strategies and kill you.

I would recommend Axelrod's book "The Evolution of Cooperation" for ideas surrounding this.

Consider the statement "Autonomous weapons are inevitable" carefully. What it means is, any state actor can potentially invest in tech to develop these type of weapons and succeed in a few years. In other words autonomous weapons are within striking distance of technological progress (as opposed to, say, human landing on Mars.)

With the above information, what would you do, if you were a state actor of an advanced country? Surely, (1) you either want to develop these yourself, or (2) ensure that nobody else develops them. (2) can be achieved by international treaties, but the question is whether it can be enforced. If state actors don't trust option (2), then the only option left is (1).

There are more than two options. Some other options include building defenses against such weapons or actively working to subvert the other side's building process.

Okay - Without understanding a specific tech, would it be possible to defend against it? And subversion may not be possible against certain countries. I would rather have these type of weapons developed by countries ruled by democracy.

Also, sending wave after wave of your own men at them until the killbots reached their pre-programmed kill limit and shut down.

I am assuming this is a joke, but if it isn't, then guess which countries have/don't have the manpower to be thrown at killbots :P

> I've never understood the commonly expressed idea that if the end of the world seems inevitable that it is therefore logical to work towards it.

Because the consequence being the end of the world rather than just a large part of it is what keeps the peace.

So far, anyway. The more you keep advancing ways to end the world, and make them cheaper and easier, the more risk you create that they fall in the hands of someone whose actual goal is to end the world rather than deterrence.

Doesn't work. All it takes is one power hungry dictator to screw it all that up. Peace requires either a stalemate or a benevolent(this is not the right word, someone please help) overpowered force to threaten others to stay in line.

> benevolent(this is not the right word, someone please help) overpowered force

Perhaps you meant dispassionate?

He probably meant "a power not interested in war for war's sake, content with the territorial status quo and preferring diplomacy to use of force, though not beyond use of force if deemed necessary".

Expressing this quality in a single word is a challenge.

Autonomous weapons do not translate to an inevitable end of the world any more than all the previous weapon systems constructed by humans. Warfare and diplomacy adapt to new developments.

At the very least weapons are controllable; they have a kill switch. Things like SARS-Cov-2 do not have a kill switch.

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