Friday, February 29, 2008

Autonomous Weapons Are Bad. MmmKay?

Today there's an article on Engadget that talks about hopes to legalize armed, autonomous robots on the battlefield. I find this very disturbing. Aside from the obvious concerns of inappropriate killing, I strongly believe there's a limit to what we should automate. Let's assume that it's unlikely that a sufficiently complex circuit will eventually and spontaneously become self aware (though I believe that is possible). I think we all know how likely it is that a mischievous or malevolent genius can and would hack into a network of killing machines to achieve his own agenda.

Here's an idea. What if we started applying our considerable talents to figuring out ways to settle differences without killing anyone?

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