Is it set of values that we apply every day to say good from bad?

I got feeling that in humans it varies greatly. We can give new robot new strong universal values. Well, may be we should we stick with old values?

Here is Bernd test:
“How do you get a robot to tell an insurgent from an innocent”. So far nobody can. 16 yrs old dead Taliban becomes dead kid because… he is 16 yrs old. But young fighter’s ruthless eclipse adults.
I can justify and support this war. But emotionally I cannot accept 100’s dead. Just sound: 100’s ethically killed.

My ethic just fails here. Lets step on ’shoulders of giants’ and reuse somebody else ideas. Geneva Convention is the pinnacle of War Ethic.

After first read Geneva Conventions sound like naive pipe dream. Long “to do” list including cases when POW are eligible for salary. That salary is to match of your arm force.

Read Geneva Conventions again. They meaningless. They imply such level of interaction between adversaries that you cannot expect even between allies. Establish safe zone for civilians recognized by both sides.

Read once more… They make any military action against non conventional arm force next to imposable. Who are Taliban/Tamil Tigers/HAMAS and most Africans liberation armies? According to Geneva Conventions they ar either combatants or civilians. Practically they are bands of mercenaries ‘living from land’. They tax/racket local population while don’t pledge allegiance to any recognized state.

BTW West/US ethical values are not universal. Back to Afghanistan. I saw General Dustum spoke about Human Right Record of US Army. He is the guy who literally baked 10’s Taliban prisoners in Sea Containers under Sun once his prison run out of capacity.

Now I am back on 1930’s Moscow streets and prophesy about 3 ft of horse apples came true. Bernd please send me good ethical robot :). Or you no please send non-ethical one.

In Afghanistan Karzai is implementing some odious laws. That does not really matter. The point is that in a few years the war will be completely robotic. The US will be able to carry on indefinitely with zero casualties. Casualties among the Afghan population will however NOT be non zero.

This is what people do not seem to realise.

Sorry for multiple post.

I hope my 3 main points stay:

1. Today combat robots just overblown RC toys… But they kill for real. No immediate danger to US public. I cannot escape that sound very unethical even to my non-liberal taste.

2. We stay hostages of technology for at least 30 yrs. Complex automatic/semi automatic system controlling factories/plants/ballistic shields/ballistic missiles.

3. Any progress in technology to the scale that machine would be able recognize/identify/object and make conscious decision would change society to the point that we cannot foresee now.

Let me offer my favorite example on far reaching prognoses:
Back in 1890’s in booming Tzar’s Moscow. Somebody ran time series of growing number of horses vs. lagging number of street cleaners. In report, he extrapolated that by 1930 Moscow would be under 3ft of horse apples. I still cannot find any errors in his math…

“Why does he focus only on one team that write the actual program???”

Where in the column is there a mention of one team that writes the actual program? Here’s the quote. Note “teams” (plural).

“Unfortunately, such a belief is sorely outdated, harking back to the time when computers were simpler and their programs could be written and understood by a single person,” the study says. “Now programs with millions of lines of code are written by teams of programmers, none of whom knows the entire program; hence, no individual can predict the effect of a given command with absolute certainty since portions of programs may interact in unexpected, untested ways.”

Sorry guys, Mr. Bernd Debusmann story based on ‘Terminator’ movies rather than on real facts.

1. For the begging all computer systems are created by many many teams not single person. 100’s teams are involved with CPU/storage/display etc. Software at least involves operation system (huge number of people) and actual application software. Why does he focus only on one team that write the actual program???

2. No field weapon system makes firing decision without human interaction. Nothing even comes close to such system. Even the most complex targeting systems can ‘keep eye on the ball’ but cannot pick a ball. All robots are nothing more as remote controlled toys with autopilot capabilities at best. Ballistic/cruise missiles have much high level of automation. The most dangerous systems are US/Russia ‘Ballistic shields’ that fielded for last 30 yrs. They have record of issued false alerts. Yet they escape Debusmann attention.

3. Debusmann story robotic of ‘rebellions’ in S.Africa is nothing more than misfiring. It has nothing to do implied machine conscious decision to harm human.

4. Current CPUs can crunch 1,000,000,000,000 arithmetic ops per second… but don’t suited well for fussy pattern recognition. That what humans do the best. Modern CPUs are at the level of insect/fish.

May be we will come to the point when machines recognize real life objects and make ethical decisions. But on this way world changes so dramatically that I would consult Asimov rather than Debusmann.