Engineers should refuse to work on killer robots, says Australian ethicist Dr Robert Sparrow.Boy, that was sure easy. Just scoot past thousands of years of philosophical discussion on, say, Catholic "Just War" doctrine and jump straight to drones are bad, mkay?
Sparrow's definition of a killer robot includes the Predator drone, a weapon he finds objectionable because “Military robots are making it easier for governments to start wars, thinking that they won't incur any casualties on their own side."
That means “The ethics of working on military robotics today cannot be entirely divorced from the ethics of the ends to which military robots are used,” he writes in IEEE Technology and Society Magazine.
Not that he might not have a point, but that his facile point recalls the old Economist joke:
Two Economists were taking a hike in the woods when they fell into an abandoned mineshaft. The sides were too steep to climb back up, and nobody heard their cries for help.Well, it made me recall the joke, anyway. Hey, maybe the good Doctor is just trolling:
In despair, one sat down and said, "That's it. We're going to die. We can't get out."
"Nonsense," said the other. "Assume a ladder."
4 comments:
Dr. Sparrow is overlooking the fact that robots, like any effective military technology, will be copied and sold all over the world until nobody will need to send living creatures into battle.
He's just mad that we got them first.
He's an ethicist... Nuff said...
He's an idiot if he's not a troll.
I am sure that nobody in a position of power will ever[1] think that drones will allow an aggressor to start a bloodless-on-their-side war.
[1] excepting situations like "A Taste of Armageddon".
I think it should all be blamed on the guy that invented the bow and arrow. All that "killing from a distance" started with him.
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