Pentagon Study Urges ‘Immediate Action’ On Thinking Weapons
By COLIN CLARK on August 25, 2016
WASHINGTON: Should the United States build physical and cyber Terminators, weapons that do not have a human in the loop? The unequivocal answer from the prestigious Defense Science Board is yes.
This study concluded that DoD must accelerate its exploitation of autonomyboth to realize the potential military value and to remain ahead of adversaries who also will exploit its operational benefits, the DSB study says. Machines and computers can process much more data much more quickly than can humans, enabling the U.S. to act inside an adversarys operations cycle. And that is why it is vital if the U.S. is to sustain military advantage. Ruth David, of the National Science Foundation and coauthor of three books on signal processing algorithms, and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Paul Nielsen, co-authored the study. Autonomy and human-machine assistance are, of course, core elements of the Pentagons Third Offset Strategy.
Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Paul Selva, repeated his cautious embrace of autonomous weapons today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Breaking D readers will remember his use of the wonderful term Terminator Conundrum to describe the ethical issues the military faces as it allows weapons to make decisions in battle without a human being. Today, I asked him again if the US should pursue treaty or other international restrictions on the weapons and he didnt address it directly.
Selva appeared to agree with Frank Kendall, the head of Pentagon acquisition, who worries that enemies will not care as much about the ethical niceties of allowing a robot to kill human beings. He said there will be violators of any agreement, as there are with chemical weapons and other banned weapons. Syria and Daesh (known to some as ISIL) have both used chemical weapons this month.
http://breakingdefense.com/2016/08/pentagon-study-urges-immediate-action-on-thinking-weapons-vcjcs-selva-cautious/
Statistical
(19,264 posts)GeorgeGist
(25,320 posts)struggle4progress
(118,282 posts)bemildred
(90,061 posts)And naive young men are much cheaper to produce and train than fancy robots with glowing eyes.
bananas
(27,509 posts)and a threat to themselves and others.