this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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I am a FIRM believer in any automated kill without a human pulling the trigger is a war crime
Yes mines yes uavs yes yes yes
It is a crime against humanity
Stop
What if the human is pulling the trigger to "paint the target" and tag it for hunt and destroy then the drone goes and kills it? Because that's how lots of missles already work. So where's the line?
The line is where an automatic process target and execute a human being. When it is automated. The arming of a device is not sufficient to warrant a human interaction, and as such mines are also not allowed.
This should in my opinion always have been the case. Mines are indiscriminate and have proven to be wildly inhumane in several ways. Significantly, innocents are often killed.
But mines don't paint the picture of what automated slaughter can lead to.
The point has been laid that when the conscious mind has to kill, it makes war have an important way to end, in the mind.
The dangers extend well beyond killing innocent targets, another part is the coldness of allowing a machine to decide, that is beyond morally corrupt. There is something terrifying about the very idea that facing one of these weapons, there is nothing to negotiate, the cold calculations that want to kill you are not human. It is a place where no human ever wants to be. But war is horrible. It's the escalation of automated triggers that can lead to exponential death with no remorse which is just a terrible danger.
The murder weapons has nobody's intent behind them, except very far back, in the arming and the program. It open for scenarios where mass murder becomes easy and terrifyingly cold.
Kind of like the prisoner's dilemma shows us, that when war escalates, it can quickly devolve into revenge narratives, and when either side has access to cold impudent kills, they will use them. This removes even more humanity from the acts and the violence can reach new heights beyond our comprehension.
Weapons of mass destruction with automated triggers will eventually seal our existence if we don't abolish it with impunity. It has been seen over and over how the human factor is the only grace that ever end or contain war. Without this component I think we are just doomed to have the last intent humans ever had was revenge, and the last emotions fear and complete hopelessness.
Well, that's all very idealistic, but it's likely not going to happen.
Israel already used AI to pick bombing sites, those bombs and missiles would have been programmed with altitudes and destinations (armed) then dropped. The pilots only job these days is to avoid interception, fly over the bombing locations, tag the target when acquired, and drop them. Most of this is already done in software.
Eventually humans will leave the loop because unlike self-driving cars, these technologies won't risk the lives of the aggressor's citizens.
If the technology is seen as unstoppable enough, there may be calls for warnings to be given, but I suspect that's all the mercy that will be shown...
... especially if it's a case of a country with automated technologies killing one without or with stochastically meaningless defenses (eg. Defenses that modelling and simulations show won't be able to prevent such attacks).
No, in all likelihood the US will tell the country the attack sites, the country either will or will not have the technical level to prevent an amount of damage, will evacuate all necessary personal, and whoever doesn't get the message or get out in time will be automatically killed.
Where defenses are partially successful, that information will go into the training data for the next model, or upgrade, and the war machine will roll on.
Sorry I was stressed when replying. Yeah in those cases humans have pulled the trigger. At several stages.
When arming a murder bot ship and sending to erase an island of life, you then lose control. That person is not pulling loads and loads of triggers. The triggers are automatic by a machine making the decision to end these lives.
And that is a danger, same as with engineered bio warfare. It just cannot be let out of the box even, or we all may die extremely quick.
The entire point of automating the killing is that it is no dead man's switch or any other human interaction involved in the kill. It is moot if there is one such. Call offs or dead switch back doors safety contingencies are not a solution to rampant unwanted slaughter as it can fail in so many ways and when the wars escalate to the point where those need to be used it is too late because there are 5 different strains of murder bots and you can only stop the ones you have codes to and those codes are only given to like three people at top secret level 28
Nope
You described a scenarios where a human was involved in several stages of the killing so it's no wonder those don't hold up
If it is a bad kill, is there a person who will go to jail or be executed for it?
Only the losing side is subject to war crimes trials, and no doubt rules of engagement will be developed and followed to prevent people going to jail due to "bad kills".
There are really no "bad kills" in the armed services, there's just limited exposure of public scandals.
Especially for the US who doesn't subject its self to international courts like The Hague. So any atrocities, accidents, or war crimes will still just be internal scandals and temporary.
Same as it is today.
https://www.cnn.com/2019/06/23/politics/eddie-gallagher-navy-seal-trial/index.html
Biological and chemical warfare
If a country implements murder machines that efficiently slay a continent then does not stop at the sea.
Will nobody for real do nothing?
Is that your belief for bad kills? Same with gas and engineered disease?
Very mature
Of course there isn't just like there isn't when a human makes a mistake on the battlefield, you think that every civilian killed by an American soldier in Afghanistan resulted in a trial and punishment? American hasn't executed amy soldiers since 1961 (for rape and attempted murder of a child in austria, not during war)
Honestly at least the military code will obey orders and only focus on the objective rather than rape and murder for fun.
Like if someone made a biological weapon that wipes out a continent
Will someone go to prison?
It's no difference
I see this as a positive: when both sides have AI unmanned planes, we get cool dogfights without human risk! Ideally over ocean or desert and with Hollywood cameras capturing every second in exquisite detail.
I am a firm believer that any war is a crime and there is no ethical way to wage wars lmao It’s some kind of naive idea from extremely out of touch politicans.
War never changes.
The idea that we don’t do war crimes and they do is only there to placate our fragile conscience. To assure us that yes we are indeed the good guys. That kills of infants by our soldiers are merely the collateral. A necessary price.
Absolutely. But
There's a science and whole cultures built around war now
It is important to not infantilize the debate by being absolutist and just shutting any action out.
I am a hard core pacifist at heart.
But this law I want is just not related to that. It is something I feel is needed just to not spell doom on our species. Like with biological warfare
How often do robots fail? How can anyone be so naive as to not see the same danger as with bio warfare? You can't assure a robot to not become a mass murder cold ass genocidal perpetual machine. And that's a no no if we want to exist
You mean it should be a war crime, right? Or is there some treaty I am unaware of?
Also, why? I don't necessarily disagree, I am just curious about your reasoning.
Not OP, but if you can't convince a person to kill another person then you shouldn't be able to kill them anyways.
There are points in historical conflicts, from revolutions to wars, when the very people you picked to fight for your side think "are we the baddies" and just stop fighting. This generally leads to less deaths and sometimes a more democratic outcome.
If you can just get a drone to keep killing when any reasonable person would surrender you're empowering authoritarianism and tyranny.
see star trek TNG episode The Arsenal of Freedom for a more explicit visualisation of this ☝️ guy's point.
Take WWI Christmas when everyone got out of the trenches and played some football (no not American foot touches the ball 3x a game)
It almost ended the war
Yes the humanity factor is vital
Imagine the horrid destructive cold force of automated genocide, it can not be met by anything other than the same or worse and at that point we are truly doomed
Because there will then be no one that can prevent it anymore
It must be met with worse opposition than biological warfare did after wwI, hopefully before tragedy
Mines are designated war crimes by the ~~Geneva convention~~ Ottawa treaty because of the indiscriminate killing. Many years ago, good human right lawyers could have extended that to drones... (Source: i had close friends in international law)
But i feel like now the tides have changed and tech companies have influenced the general population to think that ai is good enough to prevent "indiscriminate" killing.
Edit: fixed the treaty name, thanks!
Use of mines is not designated a war crime by the Geneva Convention.
Some countries are members of a treaty that prohibits the use of some types of mines, but that is not the Geneva Convention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty
Mines are not part of what people refer to as the Geneva conventions. There is a separate treaty specifically banning some landmines, that was signed by a lot of countries but not really any that mattered.
Yes
Because it is a slippery slope and dangerous to our future existence as a species
Slippery slope how?
First it is enemy tanks. Then enemy air. Then enemy boats and vehicles, then foot soldiers and when these weapons are used the same happens to their enemy. Then at last one day all humans are killed
I broadly agree, but that's not what this is, right?
This is a demonstration of using AI to execute combat against an explicitly selected target.
So it still needs the human to pull the trigger, just the trigger does some sick plane stunts rather than just firing a bullet in a straight line.
I would imagine it was more than evasive since they called it a dogfight, but ye