Comment by next_xibalba
1 day ago
If we were able to give the Ukrainians fully automated kill bots, and those kill bots enabled Ukraine to swiftly expel the Russians from their territories, would that not be a good thing? Or would you rather the meat grinder continue to destroy Ukraine's young men to satisfy some moral purity threshold?
If we could give Taiwan killbots that would ensure China could never invade, or at least could never occupy Taiwan, would that be good or bad? I have a feeling I know what the Taiwanese would say.
While we're at it, should we also strip out all the machine learning/AI driven targeting systems from weapons? We might feel good about it, but I would bet my life savings that our future adversaries will not do the same.
You seem to see everything from a binary perspective. China bad, Taiwan good. Russia bad, Ukraine good.
The world is more nuanced than that.
But to answer your question. No we should not give anyone automatic kill bots. Automatic kill bots shouldn’t even be a thing.
Yes, I think Russia's invasion of Ukraine is quite clearly a binary Russia=bad, Ukraine=good. Same for the impending Chinese invasion of Taiwan. Perhaps you could explain the nuances under which Russia was the good guy? Better yet, maybe you could explain it to the Ukrainians who have been displaced, or the family members of those who have been killed, or the soldiers who have been permanently maimed?
Whether you or I like it or not, automatic kill bots will be a thing. It will only be a question of which countries have them and which do not.
And there is evidence automated killbots were already used in Gaza (not that that's a good thing).
Generally, in war, there are no rules, and someone is going to make automated killbots, and I expect one place to see them quite soon is in the Russia-Ukraine war. And yes, I'm hoping the good guys use them and win over the bad guys. And yes, there are good guys and bad guys in that conflict.
Rephrasing your "inquiry" to highlight how short-sighted this is:
If giving the ukranians nuclear warheads could help them default Russia, then isn't that good? Wouldn't using nuclear warheads to erradicate Russia end the war almost immediately?
Like, why are we even bothering with automated killing robots? That's stupid. We already have nukes, and they're the ultimate weapon, so just do that.
Do you not see how this greedy line of logic could easily lead to the destruction of not just the US, but the entire human race?
This is LITERALLY the plot line of Terminator. Literally. "Hey guys let's build skynet, isn't that a good idea??"
Like... do you not hear yourself? What is not clicking here?
> This is LITERALLY the plot line of Terminator. Literally.
No, it's not. Skynet was a recursively self improving ASI. You are conflating an autokill bot and, apparently, an ASI that can embody and replicate itself.
> If giving the ukranians nuclear warheads could help them default Russia, then isn't that good?
Surely, you can recognize how an autokill bot and a thermonucelar weapon are different, right? These are categorically different concepts. What's more, Russia is a nuclear armed opponent with, reportedly, dead man's hand systems that would launch their entire nuclear arsenal even if their command structure is destroyed in a nuclear first strike.
I'll just repeat the basic point here: autokill bots are coming. Whether any of us like it or not. Just like nuclear weapons. If I could wave a magic wand and eliminate all weapons of mass destruction in the world, I would. But that's not reality. So, walk me through how you think this plays out if we don't develop them, but Russia, China, etc. do?
I can't think of a more clear cut case of moral, justified deployment of autokill bots than to aid Ukraine in expelling the Russian invaders.
> No, it's not. Skynet was a recursively self improving ASI. You are conflating an autokill bot and, apparently, an ASI that can embody and replicate itself.
It never said it was any of that. The point of terminator is that decisioning around war was taken out of the hands of humans, and then nobody could control it.
You people really don't get it do you? Skynet doesn't need to be evil, or conscious, or self improving. It can be good, very good. But when WE don't control it, we don't know the consequences of what we created. Nobody saw AI psychosis coming but we created it, by making the models good. By making the models listen to you and agree with you.
For fucks sake, you could make an automated system that just signs postcards and, if you give it enough access, it could wipe out the human race. Not because it's evil, it might not even have an understanding of evil, but because we don't control it, and it will meet it's own goals without concerns for us because it's not human.
> autokill bots are coming. Whether any of us like it or not.
Inevitability is not an argument, and I won't humor it. It's cognitively lazy and dishonest. With this reasoning you can justify ANYTHING. Rape, murder, nuclear warfare, killing and eating children. This reasoning is bad and stupid and nobody should do it anymore.
1 reply →
The thing about building fulling automated kill bots is then you've built fully automated kill bots.
Fully automated kill bots are coming, whether any of us like it or not. The question is, which militaries will have them, and which militaries will be sitting ducks? China is pursuing autonomous weapons at full speed.
Personally, I think it'd be great to have the Anthropic people at the table in the creation of such horrors, if only to help curb the excesses and incompetencies of other potential offerings.
Ukrainian young (24 y.o.) man here. Living and working in police 30 kilometres away from the actual frontline.
No, thanks, we don't need those "fully automated kill bots". There's absolutely no guarantee that they wouldn't kill the operator (I mean, the one who directs them) or human ally.
We're pretty much fine with drone technology we have.
But for me personally, that's not the most important point. What is more important - and what almost no one in the Western countries seems to realise (no offence, but many of westerners seem to be kind of binary-minded: it's either 0xFFFFFF or 0x000000, no middle ground at all) - is that on the Russian side, soldiers are not "fully automated kill bots" either. Sure, there's a lot of... let's say - war criminals. Yes, for sure. But en masse they are the same young men that you can see on the Ukrainian side. Moreover, many people in Ukraine have relatives in Russia, and there already were the cases where two siblings were in different armies, literally fighting with each other. So in my opinion, "fully automated kill bots" are not an option here. At least unless you deploy them in Moscow and St. Peterburg to neutralize all of the Russian elites, military commandment and other decision-making persons of the current regime.