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Comment by zizee | Hacker News Reader

When it eventually happens, society will have to change.

viva la revolution baby!

This is the classic view, but things have changed.

Robots do not just make better workers, they are also better warriors. How many Chinese peasants does it take to kill a single UAV? How many protestors can modern riot police crowd control using sophisticated psychological warfare combined with advanced nonlethal weaponry?

Once the violent, unskilled, uneducated, unmoneyed lawbreakers are rounded up by the riot police and thrown in jail... then what? The Chinese are not shy about executions. How about humane lethal injections for everyone?

I guess it could happen gradually (as these things usually do). But the original poster was talking about 50% of the population (500 million people in China alone). I have a hard time believing anyone could think that killing off half a billion people would be the way to go (rather than trying to work change into your social structure). It just sounds too James Bond villanesque.

Also, if 50% of people are unemployed there will be a lot of people who are employed who sympathise with them, so we are really talking about 80% plus.

I have a hard time believing anyone could think that killing off half a billion people would be the way to go ... It just sounds too James Bond villanesque.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocides_in_history

And those are just the groups who actually achieved it. Many more thought about it or tried it.

The OP said he "can't even believe that anyone could think of [mass murder]."

Think!

Lack of imagination, lack of historical awareness, or just plain willful ignorance?

Lack of imagination, lack of historical awareness, or just plain willful ignorance?

Or perhaps I was just chose the wrong turn of phrase? No need to go on a pedantic nerd rage.

Of course people could think about it. Of course people have killed millions of people in the past.

What I was trying to say is that any sensible leader in a industrialised nation would not choose exterminating 50% of their population instead of than trying to affect social change.

Of course we could have another Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot who tries for genocide again. But killing 50% of your population is much different to killing 5%. Those 50% are going to have friends so you'd be up against 80-90% of the population. It would just be more sensible to try to redistribute wealth at that stage.

But yes, I'm sure whack jobs can think about these things and with modern weapons you could probably do it etc.

It will take just 1 good hacker with ideals

They are not "better warriors." UAVs are not completely robots. They need someone to control them. There is not a single military in the world where robots have surpassed human beings in most capacities. Perhaps the only one being bomb control, and even then, they aren't autonomous.

The "rich" people need the poor people. Without other classes, there is no rich. If everyone is in jail, who buys the goods?

What is money worth if there is no one to compare it to? If everyone is poor or in jail...why do you want money? For what? To do what? To drive a nice car that no one cares about because they can't afford food?

People are too quick to overestimate robotics and artificial intelligence. 100 years ago we were supposed to have flying cars, laser guns and teleportation. These were exaggerated views, just as ours are now.

This. You do not want to have too many poor people or somebody will take advantage of this and use them to overthrow whomever is in power and put himself in power.

Tanks make this a difficult proposition.

Only if you have brainwashed the tank crews (which admittedly does happen in the military).

In this scenario, I'd imagine the tank crews to be automated too.

Yes, this would be a big problem if warfare was to become fully automated.

I guess we have to hope that when the ability to completely automate warfare that the people in power aren't genocidal sociopaths.

In this situation a tank crew would be attacking their fellow country men, so one would hope hope they would be questioning their orders to fire on civilians.

If they didn't question the orders you would have to question whether they were brainwashed into thinking the fellow country men were deserving of attack.

A lot of militaries train their soldiers to not question the orders of their superiors. I believe the US military does allow a solider to question orders, but I would expect that it is not encouraged.

Police fire on and kill civilians every day in the USA, why would someone in the military behave any differently if ordered to do so? They've already agreed to obey to kill at someone else's request.

ck2 wrote: Police fire on and kill civilians every day in the USA, why would someone in the military behave any differently if ordered to do so? They've already agreed to obey to kill at someone else's request.

I think we are in agreement. I was just trying to clarify my comment above because I was confused as to why my previous comment had been down voted. +1 for you :-)

US law in this area is largely illusory. It makes reference to "lawful orders", but provides little guidance on what would constitute an "unlawful order". Getting it wrong means prison, and getting it right can still mean prison -- the last case I heard about, the military court basically said "the order is lawful unless you are told otherwise by a superior officer", making the entire question moot.

You don't have to look too hard for a real-life example of this scenario. Just look at what happened in Libya and other countries affected by the Arab Uprising - how military behaved in different countries. They're facing this dilemma right now.

The precedent has already been set in the biggest country in the world.

The Tiananmen square massacre was committed by the current Chinese government. Do you think they've grown a conscience in the last 20 years? Or does killing over a thousand (1,000) civilians agitating for Democracy just make it that much easier to kill a hundred thousand (100,000) civilians later on?

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