this post was submitted on 19 Apr 2024
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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?
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.
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
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.
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
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.
Slippery slope how?
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.
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.