Why does this not apply to rifles? / Again, why isn’t this isomorphic to “Human equipped with weapon X” versus “unarmed human”?
Killer robots pose a threat to democracy that rifles do not. Please see “Near-Term Risk: Killer Robots a Threat to Freedom and Democracy” and the TED Talk link therein “Daniel Suarez: The kill decision shouldn’t belong to a robot”. You might also like to check out his book “Daemon” and it’s sequel.
Once more: Why are “Killer Robots” different from “machine guns” in this sentence?
Machine guns are wielded by humans, the humans can make better ethical decisions than robots currently can.
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.
Killer robots pose a threat to democracy that rifles do not. Please see “Near-Term Risk: Killer Robots a Threat to Freedom and Democracy” and the TED Talk link therein “Daniel Suarez: The kill decision shouldn’t belong to a robot”. You might also like to check out his book “Daemon” and it’s sequel.
Machine guns are wielded by humans, the 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.