The most shocking angle of all, is how willing people are to build this technology - like, the cool factor overrides any moral or ethical issues, and even bringing up a question of ethics around these technologies will get you segregated from the 'cool hunter' classes...
Even guided missiles, which seem indiscriminate, are much more precise and limit collateral damage. 50 years ago the alternative was carpet bombing - a guided missile produces much more targeted damage. You can argue that guided missiles save lives - if you want someone dead enough that you're willing to kill everyone around them, having an option to just knock them out seems much more humane (especially to the kids on the nearby playground).
Plus, I'd absolutely hate to be the side that didn't uparmor with autonomous systems - you'd get creamed. Like it or not, it's a part of the battlefield now. I'm not a fan of us bringing back tactical nuclear (low yield) munitions, but that's apparently also happening.
AND the work can be totally badass, the stability/pay is good, and you just get more valuable as you age (unlike being, say, a front end web developer). Plus seeing something you built go out to the range and tear apart a tank/knock down an RPG/launch into space/whatever is really, really dang cool.
No, it was snipers or specialist teams if it was about taking out one person or a small group with minimal collateral damage. Carpet bombing was for taking out unknown opponents in a specific area with no concern for collateral damage. They could switch off stuff like drones and guided missiles to get more precision using the trained specialists. This is exactly what Richard Marcinko of SEAL 6 wanted after watching SIGINT and technical solutions screw up missions for so long that the human soldiers then had to salvage.
They aren't but the bots and drones are.
If these existed, would people continue attempt to cross illegally? The thought-provoking argument is that these pieces of technology, if foolproof, would go completely unused as people inherently value their lives (but not laws.)
I wish I could have lived in a bubble, developing "tech" that didn't matter and was only positive, but even the most disconnected web jockey is paid for by the surveillance-capitalism dollars of the modern internet. That tech might be worse for society overall - it gave us the creeping global eye at a pace faster than legislation could keep up with it, or that society could adapt, and it seemed innocuous at first.
People tell themselves all sorts of things to justify this kind of cognitive dissonance. The predominant arguments I've seen are:
A) Technology isn't good/bad, it's how you use it. And fortunately for the engineers, the tech will be used far away by people they'll never meet and the details of which will remain classified. Out of sight, out of mind.
B) If we don't build it, someone else will. And we don't want this tech to fall into our enemy's hands first, do we? Best defense is a good offense.
I'm not actually clear on what's incorrect about this logic -- unless there's some kind of agreement across all superpowers not to research this subject, or the subject itself is not actually beneficial to research.. why would you assume that none of your potential adversaries are researching it?
And once you recognize that they might research it, and that if they did research it, and you didn't, they might switch from potential adversary to actual adversary (as they now believe themselves to have the upper hand), the only moral and ethical thing to do ... is to research it yourself!
Perhaps the more moral and ethical thing is to give away the technology once you have it, so that you yourself won't have the chance to be aggressor ... but otherwise, I'm not sure how you can justify not researching it (war, and the potential for it, exists regardless of whether you want it to)
It's this same logic that gave us The Cold War.
Without an absurd premise (eg pretending war isn't an ever-present threat for any nation-state), and without requiring some Oracle or superior governing body to determine behaviors without the fog of war, what superior and general logic should have been applied that would have avoided the cold war?
That this particular bit of logic leads us to the Cold War is well and fine; was the Cold War avoidable with some other reasonable mode of operation?
The logic that the entire population is stuck on this planet (then and now for the time being), and the resources/ideologies being fought over don't mean a thing if everyone is dead.
I don't trust humans to avoid war crimes. Robots could have protections built in in a way that international orgs can verify.
And war, especially modern war, isn't a human task. Humans are bad at it, and it's bad for humans. Cool, precise machines though? No fear, no boredom, no hunger, no sleep. What's not to love?
And it's chic and cyberpunk af. They better be smart and unhackable and free of bugs though.
I actually can't think of something more cyberpunk dystopia we-are-the-bad-guys than mindless killing machines that uphold imperialism.
> They better be smart and unhackable and free of bugs though.
Damn it, this is a joke that I misread, right? Surely you're not serious?
Yeah, this is the rub. Better weapons systems mean easier tyranny.
I couldn't imagine what life is going to be like when there are fleets of these things patrolling cities, but I guess we're going to find out soon enough.
I imagine a scenario akin to Hong Kong - 2 million people, whose leaders are suddenly rendered unconscious mid-march by a fleet of drones.