Killing Robots and Just War Theory
The &quot;Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists&quot; website has not seen fit to post yet a comment I made there a few days ago on &quot;Russia may have used a killer robot in Ukraine. Now what?&quot;:
<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thebulletin.org&#x2F;2022&#x2F;03&#x2F;russia-may-have-used-a-killer-robot-in-ukraine-now-what&#x2F;#comment-40002" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;thebulletin.org&#x2F;2022&#x2F;03&#x2F;russia-may-have-used-a-kille...</a><p>So I will put a copy of what I posted there here on HN, since it is relevant to the bigger picture of killer robots:<p>I&#x27;ve thought about how to mitigate the risks of (potentially self-replicating) autonomous military robots and other potential WMDs since the 1980s when I was a visitor at the CMU Robotics labs of Hans Moravec and Red Whittaker, and also from taking classes with Frank von Hippel, Steve Slaby, George Miller, Gerry O&#x27;Neill, and Jim Beniger at Princeton, and from hanging out a few times with Freeman Dyson at the IAS and also talking with Ted Taylor (who Freeman Dyson put me in touch with) -- as well as talking to many other people and reading widely on this and related issues (both non-fiction and also insightful fiction, like James P. Hogan&#x27;s Voyage from Yesteryear). My thoughts on this are summarized in an essay I wrote in 2010 on my website &quot;Recognizing irony is key to transcending militarism&quot;.<p>Essentially, political controls will likely ultimately fail in the long-term given that parties to the (unlikely-in-any-case) political agreements have big incentives to cheat as long as they view the world in zero-sum competitive terms. As Freeman Dyson has explained in his book &quot;Weapons and Hope&quot;, as long as the capacity to build WMDs remains they will always be a potential issue regardless of what treaties exist. The capacity to build such things eventually will always exist in an advanced technosphere. Right now it is relatively easy to build bioweapons and drones, and much harder to build nukes (which potentially might get easier with new advances in physics and material science). Frankly, we are doomed if we depend on political treaties alone to deal with this. What might succeed is ultimately a change of heart to A Newer Way of Thinking (like Albert Einstein and others like Donald Pet have talked about). Such a change of heart will involve emphasizing mutual security, intrinsic security, and achieving abundance from all through wise use of advanced technology. It will be a cultural change that makes the biggest difference, where in the long-term various political agreements might at most just reflect a global change of heart and perspective.<p>On a practical basis, tools that reflect a newer way of collaborative thinking like Dialogue Mapping with IBIS (Jeff Conklin) and Convergent Facilitation (Miki Kashtan) may help groups a lot in thinking of better solutions that address the needs of everyone. Better Free and Open Source Intelligence tools widely deployed may also help everyone make better decisions and avoid disasters like Ukraine.<p>==== More Details<p>To that end of a change of heart and perspective towards a newer way of thinking, here are the main points from that essay:<p>Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead?<p>Nuclear weapons are ironic because they are about using space age systems to fight over oil and land. Why not just use advanced materials as found in nuclear missiles to make renewable energy sources (like windmills or solar panels) to replace oil, or why not use rocketry to move into space by building space habitats for more land?<p>Biological weapons like genetically-engineered plagues are ironic because they are about using advanced life-altering biotechnology to fight over which old-fashioned humans get to occupy the planet. Why not just use advanced biotech to let people pick their skin color, or to create living arkologies and agricultural abundance for everyone everywhere?<p>These militaristic socio-economic ironies would be hilarious if they were not so deadly serious. ...<p>Likewise, even United States three-letter agencies like the NSA and the CIA, as well as their foreign counterparts, are becoming ironic institutions in many ways. Despite probably having more computing power per square foot than any other place in the world, they seem not to have thought much about the implications of all that computer power and organized information to transform the world into a place of abundance for all. Cheap computing makes possible just about cheap everything else, as does the ability to make better designs through shared computing. ...<p>There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those &quot;security&quot; agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ...<p>The big problem is that all these new war machines and the surrounding infrastructure are created with the tools of abundance. The irony is that these tools of abundance are being wielded by people still obsessed with fighting over scarcity. So, the scarcity-based political mindset driving the military uses the technologies of abundance to create artificial scarcity. That is a tremendously deep irony that remains so far unappreciated by the mainstream.<p>We the people need to redefine security in a sustainable and resilient way. Much current US military doctrine is based around unilateral security (&quot;I&#x27;m safe because you are nervous&quot;) and extrinsic security (&quot;I&#x27;m safe despite long supply lines because I have a bunch of soldiers to defend them&quot;), which both lead to expensive arms races. We need as a society to move to other paradigms like Morton Deutsch&#x27;s mutual security (&quot;We&#x27;re all looking out for each other&#x27;s safety&quot;) ... and Amory Lovin&#x27;s intrinsic security (&quot;Our redundant decentralized local systems can take a lot of pounding whether from storm, earthquake, or bombs and would still would keep working&quot;). ...<p>Still, we must accept that there is nothing wrong with wanting some security. The issue is how we go about it in a non-ironic way that works for everyone. ...<p>--Paul Fernhout
&quot;The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.&quot;