humans can make better ethical decisions than robots currently can.
This is not obvious. Many’s the innocent who has been killed by some tense soldier with his finger on the trigger of a loaded weapon, who didn’t make an ethical decision at all. He just reacted to movement in the corner of his eye. If there was an ethical decision made, it was not at the point of killing, but at the point of deploying the soldier, with that armament and training, to that area—and this decision will not be made by the robots themselves, for some time to come.
If you don’t like machine guns, how about minefields? The difference between a killer robot and a minefield seems pretty minuscule to me; one moves around, the other doesn’t.
Your mistake is in identifying pulling the trigger as the ethically important moment.
This is not obvious. Many’s the innocent who has been killed by some tense soldier with his finger on the trigger of a loaded weapon, who didn’t make an ethical decision at all. He just reacted to movement in the corner of his eye. If there was an ethical decision made, it was not at the point of killing, but at the point of deploying the soldier, with that armament and training, to that area—and this decision will not be made by the robots themselves, for some time to come.
If you don’t like machine guns, how about minefields? The difference between a killer robot and a minefield seems pretty minuscule to me; one moves around, the other doesn’t.
Your mistake is in identifying pulling the trigger as the ethically important moment.