Human Rights Watch Wants An International Ban On Autonomous Killer Robots

My best guess is that it means that if you want to kill someone, a human being needs to make the decision. When we get to the point where humans don't even involve themselves in the decision to take another human life, we have pretty much lost our humanity.

I see that, kind of. However, are they ready to enlist when the time comes? Methods to save human lives during wars sound good to me, whatever the "loss in humanity" may be. Autonomy can be efficiency.

We should never stop from having the most advanced military. Anything we do to protect the well being of our citizens and troops we should do. All that Human Rights Watch is going to do is get us killed. We can make our own decisions on how autonomous we want to make them. Wouldn't you call a land mine autonomous?

The reality is per our current state of technology, science and programming, computers, automation, robots and drones the reactions are those of calculated designed program instructions by a human or humans.

These above drones are just program automated killing machines, designed with preset instructions, by humans.

The drones and robots are not the problem. The problem is those who write the code\programs for these devices.

Eliminate the source of the programs, lol and the drones will be dormant with nothing to do.

............

Robot rule!!!!

Autonomous killing robots? They should start by banning mines then. There are millions of these killer bots everywhere. Some of them very advanced.

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I'm not a big fan of the very leftwing Human Rights Watch, but this ban desired by that organization is actually something I can agree with. Humanity mustn't make AUTONOMOUS military drones. A human hand should ALWAYS be the one to push the trigger. Computers shouldn't be programmed to make that decision on its own. To write that into their software is courting disaster on a "Skynet" level. And as for the guy who thinks landmines fit the definition of "autonomous", that's just plain silly. A landmine is a denial of area weapon. It just sits there and an enemy can avoid it or disarm it if they know one is present, where as an autonomous military drone that can perform recon, hunt a target and then kill it, is a far different animal.

Wars & Battles should be lead on the ground by it's leaders and via swords.

I am sure more often, these leaders would find a politcal solution.

War is War. Sure that putting the genie back in the bottle will be something that is impossible, and technology will develope along these paths without the need for them in warfare....ie...Google Car.

Who knows, maybe the future will have robots only killing robots?

Kapanen, I don't know why you want to promote robot-on-robot violence. I think Robot might take offense to that. Wars should be fought with Call of Duty tournaments.

The result of winning a robot on robot battle is then later for the winning robot to kill the opponent’s robot maker.

Lol, be careful what you wish for, ha ha.

I don't see what the problem is. The robots will only do what humans already do except more efficiently. In a way it will actually save lives. The lives of our troops will not be in jeopardy as much.

Wow, this exactly what happened in Terminator. All the nonsense about saving lives etc etc,
Nobody has a problem killing the enemy, but what about when the enemy uses the same weapon against you? Will it still be saving lives then?
Would you welcome a drone attack by a terrorist group because it saves THEIR soldiers lives?

Just so you know, it would be kind of silly to send robots to fight against robots. If I were a general my robots would be programed to ignore robots when possible and hit human targets, using hand to hand combat for maximum shock and awe.
If we are going to do the Terminator thing we could at least do a decent job of it.

killerT,
Just thinking about missiles and other automated weapons, these are diploid first at the radar towers and other automatic weapons of the enemy, and then we send the troops.

Sending in automatic weapons destroying automatic weapons is now a standard, so sending in robots to kill robots or other automatic weapons is just an upgrade of the same thing. Nothing really has change, except its more efficient at war.

The problem is when the automatic killing systems are set in to kill humans and they lose the ability to identify friend from foe and not turned off.

killerT,
Just thinking about missiles and other automated weapons, these are diploid first at the radar towers and other automatic weapons of the enemy, and then we send the troops.

Sending in automatic weapons destroying automatic weapons is now a standard, so sending in robots to kill robots or other automatic weapons is just an upgrade of the same thing. Nothing really has change, except its more efficient at war.

The problem is when the automatic killing systems are set in to kill humans and then lose the ability to identify friend, foe or civilians and not turned off.

The problem with Human Rights and war is that the first and fundamental Human Right is "life" and "life" is exactly what war takes away.

This goes as far back as the Hague convention taking away expanding ammo (hollow points) - since the goal of war was to wound and disable rather than kill.

This works with "civilized" combatants who "know what they should do" when shot (lay down and get hauled out). This does not work with people whose goal is to take you out with them (suicide bombers or "uncivilized" attackers).

Every form that has moved us into more efficient, particularly one sided, killing has been argued against as a violation of human rights (chemical weapons, firebombing, nuclear bomb, land mines, roadside UEDs, drones, etc).

This is because the idealist would like to see war turned into a giant paintball game (with no fatalities) or a conflict of even casualities (so that simple mathmatics chooses the winner in a war of equal attrition, making the war itself academic and not worth fighting).

Anything that upsets the balance of caualties or makes war more lethal for either side is harranged against as unhuman - when nothing is more human that using the newest of technology for the purposes of killing others for resources.