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Comment by ZenoArrow | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I'm not concerned with that. I'd be more concerned about powerful robots controlled by governments/corporations/anyonewhohasaninterestincontrollingyourbehaviour.

Look at what's happening in Yemen. The population there lives under the fear of drone strikes by the US (that includes the civilian population). If governments are prepared to do that with drones, what reason is there to suspect they'll turn down using something that's ground-based to impose control?

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I wish there was no reason for stupid warfare, but:

Aren't they better off than the Vietnamese who lived under the fear of Napalm bombardment? (or, for that matter, Japanese fearing the atomic bomb) I don't think that robotics has significant negative impact on warfare (and I wonder whether it has a positive impact).

Yes, in one sense people are better off with drones than they would be with land mines or cluster bombs or "shock and awe" style area-bombing.

Those are (pretty clearly, IMO) war crimes.

But still, it's useful to be worried about the potential "desensitising effect" of remote warfare. Is someone operating a drone subject to the same psychological pressure to avoid killing other humans as someone pulling a trigger? (Turns out that yes, that person probably is, but that their political superiors possibly aren't).

I think war is pretty desensitized, at least in the US, already. The military is so disconnected from the general public that there's no difference— if we hear that X civilians were killed by a drone or that X civilians were killed from a bomb or crossfire or whatever, I would argue that the response is generally the same.

And the people who make decisions don't really seem to care at all about this sort of killing except insofar as it creates backlash or has some other operational implication, which means the mode of killing doesn't really matter.

Drone operators have the same type of psychological pressure and results as ground troops: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/23/us/drone-pilots-found-to-g...

In terms of their superiors, isn't that how warfare has always been?

My guess would be that ground troops replaced by robots would likely still have a pilot with a "finger on the trigger" for a long time. If the reaction is this mixed Hacker News, how do you think extremely conservative military commanders would feel about "AI" controlled soldiers?

It doesn't help that drone pilots are treated absolutely miserably by the command. I had a friend who transferred from our electronics tech job (which was extremely laid-back and stress-free most of the time) to work in a UAV command, where the command effectively viewed its pilots as machines to work until failure. "Oh, another one attempted suicide because his wife left him? That's cool, tell the monitor that we need an extra body and we'll replace him when the next boot drop hits. In the meantime, just increase everyone else's hours from 14 hours a day to 16 hours a day. We aren't the FAA, we don't have rest requirements."

Incidentally, air traffic control had this same problem in the 90s until too many people started taking the quick way off the tower.

>> Aren't they better off than the Vietnamese who lived under the fear of Napalm bombardment?

Not really, instead they'll live in fear of Robot bombardment. Which is already happening today in (for example) Pakistan with US-directed drone strikes against civilians.

My in-laws are from North Vietnam, and I'd have a few more of them if it weren't for carpet bombing during that war.

I'm not wild about drone strikes but the scale of destruction isn't remotely comparable. I mean, just look at the amount of bombing we carried out in Laos over a similar period, even though we weren't even at war with that country: http://peterslarson.com/2010/12/15/us-bombings-in-laos-1965-...

People who get killed by a drone strike are just as dead, whether they are legitimate military targets or unlucky innocents, and likewise the suffering for people who are injured is just as dismal as from other kinds of attacks. But the scales involved are very different and we shouldn't overlook that.

using something that's ground-based to impose control?

I think we have that, they're called soldiers.

Which leads to the appeal of a mechanized infantry that never gets tired, never gets sick, kills without remorse, follows orders invariantly, doesn't eat or drink, has an upgrade path but most importantly can't be killed only destroyed or broken.

Sure the first generation won't replace all soldiers and they may never replace them all. We will need logistics and support people of course. Its not a perfect solution. But the second it becomes cheaper to put a robot in the place of a human on the battlefield.

They will.

I'm all for this, not just for our soldiers, but also for the remote population. Part of the problem of actual people in these situations is that they fear for their lives, so make decisions based on their own fear and keeping themselves alive. Eventually, robotic soldiers can hopefully be better than human soldiers at identifying a threat, even if it's just because they are programmed to take more time to do so. There will be a lot of incentives to make them as cautious as possible when categorizing civilian and soldiers in the instances where the only threat is to themselves.

Right - a robot might kill without remorse, but it also never kills because of fear, or hate, or to take revenge for its fallen comrades.

But then why does it kill at all? Presumably because it's been sent to further a human agenda.

If you imagine a noble military purpose - liberating an oppressed population from an aggressive occupying enemy, for example - then your robot soldiers are awesome; they will target only combatants; minimize collateral civilian casualties; they will never loot or rape; they will selflessly interpose themselves between the innocent and those who would harm them. The perfect heroic soldier, better than any human army could be. They will be greeted as liberators.

But to the extent that the underlying human agenda involves pacifying a civilian population, instilling fear, or outright causing terror, there's no reason to think that a robot soldier would not be capable of being far worse than human soldiers. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't have a conscience. It doesn't matter that it doesn't 'fear for its life' when kids throw stones at it if it's been programmed to respond to that threat with deadly force precisely to discourage other kids from throwing stones.

Ah, but at that time, we have something to work with. Documented evidence of automated military responding with undue force to civilians can be assessed as deemed useful by the world. If guidelines are developed, and nations sign on to them, evidence of overly aggressive robot soldiers can be seen as similar to chemical weapons, or more likely, landmines. As such, sanctions can be imposed, etc.

At the point where we take humans out of the "in-the-moment" decision process, a lot of thorny issues about what's acceptable in specific situations can become less ambiguous. Agreeing on rules is much easier than agreeing on what's acceptable behavior for a person in every situation, because a lot of that depends on state of mind.

I do believe, that it is first not a question of money (being cheaper).

You do not have images of flag covered coffins returning home. You have no insubordination. You have the possibility to do economic promotion without being labeled as doing such (regarding international treaties (at least here in the EU)). You do not need all these training facilities.

Just to name a few.

So they will even do it, if it is not cheaper to do (imho). And logistics can be automated as well (delivery by drones, something like fueling done by other drones, and so on).

I believe we will see drone-carriers analog to aircraft-carriers being at least semi autonomous as well within our lifetime.

Flag covered coffins are a powerful image which help to galvanize the people and maintain public support for a campaign.

It's hard to imagine that people will care much if all they see is a pile of scrap metal being shipped home.

It'll be extremely difficult for a government to use robotic infantry whilst having public support for such an action.

Rather than appealing to a sense of "brotherhood/camaraderie against a common foe" in order to support a campaign - propogandists will likely have to exploit the peoples sense of fear to garner support. This is a shift we have already started to see with the "war on terror".

We already have perfect soldiers that are "ever courageous, never sleep, never miss", but land mines are outlawed in most situations.

G.I Robots have been postulated for quiet some time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G.I._Robot

Yes - but replacing soldiers is happening and will continue. Having only machines on the battle field will lower the entry level for war.

Wait what? Those expensive machines make war harder, not easier.

Central African Republic has war with child soldiers using machetes and guns. It's an unpleasant truth: humans are disposable.

This is evidenced by a bunch of stuff - rich westerners have their clothes made by poor people locked into unsafe Bangladeshi warehouses; have many of our goods made by low people in terrible and dangerous conditions; by our lack of interest in garbage pickers or street children or etc.

Those expensive machines makes not a single child soldier go away - why should it?

I think the point is that humans are a lot cheaper than machines, as harsh as that is, especially if you do not care about them at all.

I suspect (but cannot point to hard numbers) that machines might actually be cheaper if you are (politically or otherwise) forced to look after your human soldiers to a reasonable standard, especially in 1st world countries.

Consider the initial training expenses, equipment, career-appropriate salary along with possibly reenlistment bonuses, along with (in the worst case) medevac, multiple complex surgeries, and lifelong treatment/disability pension for some injury. Not to mention the logistic costs of transporting them to various places around hte world, and maintaining an acceptable standard of living there.

Per-machine costs would be high, but there's comparatively little training. Maintenance would be expensive, but rehab/repair decisions would be much less politically charged. Not sure how logistics costs would compare - "life-support" is probably lower, but sourcing power & spares might be greater.

I wonder if anyone has done an economic analysis on this sort of thing.

I'm very sure there are economic analyses of this. Searching hasn't brought up details, but there are things like

- the think tank "Center for a New American Security", which seems to have some influence on politics and runs studies such as

http://www.cnas.org/research/us-defense-policy-and-military-...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_a_New_American_Secu...

- this handbook, which seems to be published by a combination of US and French Army researchers:

http://usacac.army.mil/CAC2/cgsc/carl/download/csipubs/Frenc...

(do you need reading material? http://usacac.army.mil/organizations/lde/csi/pubs - wow)

- This Australian publication discusses costs in an abstract way:

http://www.army.gov.au/Our-future/Publications/Australian-Ar...

All of these deal with robotics and the military. Ethics is discussed widely, but visions and plans are also given (for which a cost analysis should be necessary, but I haven't found details).

Concluding, the current vision of the developed world's military seems to be to replace some humans with robots and have the rest work alongside them, giving them the most dangerous tasks. (A publication lamenting the fact that army operations can be life-threatening is somewhat ironic, by the way.) However, the previous points cited child soldiers, which are neither trained well nor do they receive the benefits you mention. So we're dealing with different contexts, and both statements make sense, IMHO.

Your hypothesis was that machines lower the entry level for war. The counterexample of using untrained, disposable child soldiers indicates that the entry level is already zero. Consequently, your hypothesis is wrong; the entry level for war is actually raised via expensive machines.

Robots like the knight armor of long ago, are very expensive.

I highly recommend this TED talk about how the future of war could return us a feudal world.

http://www.ted.com/talks/daniel_suarez_the_kill_decision_sho...

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