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Comment by bitJericho | Hacker News Reader

I don't think that's so much a problem. The problem is literally robots pulling the trigger. What happens when the president is targeted due to error/hacking? A member of the military would have a major problem with assassination of her own leader; a robot may not care. What happens if everybody becomes a target? The military personnel would figure things out real quick, a robot, again, may not care.

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A member of the military might not have any problem at all with the "accidental" assassination of their leader, whether that leader is the president or the company sergeant. AI could easily provide plausible deniability.

I've been very critical of claims of the dangers of AI, but this isn't about AI - this is about giving lethal weapons to autonomous systems.

And that's just stupid. All software has bugs, and even if you don't have a problem with autonomous killing systems - I certainly do - it's incredibly irresponsible to build systems that could kill just because someone left out a semicolon or couldn't convert between miles and km.

It's taking the "blue screen of death" experience just a little too literally.

Umm, we already have machines that can kill people if someone "left out a semicolon". Airplane autopilots, medical equipment, car computers, etc. Not saying this makes it OK, but that isn't the reason. Life-critical code isn't a new thing.

And those systems all have humans operating in conjunction with them, none of those things are (currently) autonomous. The success thus far of life-critical code usually depends partially on the assistance of humans.

Most of those systems operate on their own unless/until they hit something they can't handle and a human is standing by as failover. So, unless you're saying it's OK to have deathbots as long as a human is on hand as failover if the deathbot gets confused, I think my point stands.

IMO, the current state of the F-35 rather suggests it doesn't.

A member of the military would have a major problem with assassination of her own leader

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27%C3%A9tat_an...

Usually if a leader is assassinated, the assassin is a member of the country's military.

The US is comparatively rare in having had no coups since independence and only one civil war. The US also has very strong indoctrination against this kind of thing, but individuals are just as vulnerable as robots to making the wrong decision if they are fed false information. Such as endless attacks on the legitimacy of the president's election, birth certificate, allegations of being a foreign agent, etc.

The US is of course not above assassinating foreign leaders, conspiring to have them deposed, or providing arms to military coups against democratically elected governments. Allende is probably the biggest example.

Edit: and of course there's always the risk of a single rogue individual, from Dr. Strangelove's " Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper" to the very real Ford Hood massacre. In fact, Dr. Strangelove should be required viewing on this subject; not only is it darkly hilarious, it's all about setting in motion destructive partly-automated systems which cannot be countermanded.

It's funny, because probably is more relevant to think the problem the other way.

What happens when leaders know that, no matter what, never are going to be "targeted" by their own automatic military?

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