A culture has computer simulated war and “casualties” must report to euthanasia chambers.
This was the end result agreed to to stop actual bombings.
Of course, the officers disrupt it in the end. But it’d be interesting if they returned and nothing was left but craters.
More on topic, iron dome is an automated missile interception system and works well to protect Israelis from missile attacks. Just because a system is automated doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a bad idea, but obviously there’s high risk.
In that case you broke the site guidelines by replying, and so perpetuating the flamewar, leading to hellish places like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26460291. Please note:
"Don't feed egregious comments by replying; flag them instead."
That's our version of "Please don't feed the trolls". The GP comment was egregious and deservedly flagged. Discussion can and should stop there. It's the reasonable and/or semi-reasonable replies to egregious comments that actually turn these threads into conflagrations.
Sometimes, it is really impossible to talk some sense to some people. It’s just very hard to accept for us, but it just is, and history has proved that sometimes force is , unfortunately, the wisest choice.
You also clearly don't understand what path would lead someone to resort to suicide bombing if you think you can reduce it to "a pure act of hate". These are desperate people who have been brainwashed to the point that they think they would bring more net worth to the world by blowing themselves and their surroundings up than living on. What would help "talk sense" to people is to stop engaging in illegal invasive wars that (intentionally or unintentionally) destabilise their region.
Enemy may call you terrorist, but if it is your country you are freedom fighter.
Not continue to take other people's land and not making their live worse in cunning way is also wise.
Aside from that, the real issue is that the irrational side has not yet conceded that they lost their war, 70+ years ago, against the rational actor, who had established a state. They instigated that war, as they did not wish the rational actor to have that state. They are aided in their irrationality by various NGOs, and have managed to perpetuate and sustain their presumed victimhood, by attacking, with literal impunity, the rational actor.
Now, here, you are suggesting that maybe, the rational actor should be restricted in their response to the irrational actor as it may bring the rational actor to the negotiating table. Which of course, completely neglects all the times the rational actor sat at the negotiating table with the irrational actor, hammered things most of the way out, and watched the irrational actor breach every single agreement.
So ...
What we have here has nothing to do with rational actor deciding enough is enough, and developing tech to reasonably neutralize the threat the irrational actor poses. Arguing against this de minimus effort, as it might bring the rational actor back to the table (in your mind) if they had to rely on sticks and stones ... is pretty much the definition of ludicrous.
The rational actor has tried, for 70+ years, to get the irrational actor to work with it. And has been met with bloodshed, the irrational actor targeting civilians, which, is a real war crime, as compared to the BS alleged by the irrational actor, in their attempt to get the world to ostracize the rational actor.
Exactly how, would this time be different? What would the irrational actor offer to jump start discussions? Because it is obvious from the last 70+ years that the underlying thesis of "land for peace" has not worked.
A different approach was, and is needed. As much as I hate giving Trump credit, what he did was to change the parameters, which allowed other nations to get off the ledge with the irrational actor. This is, in turn, putting pressure on the irrational actor to begin acting rationally. Those actions need to continue.
This all said, implying you wish to disarm a people who have armed themselves specifically to prevent mass slaughter at the hands of a losing side irrational non-nation state actor ... yeah ... not really a sound argument in any context.
The one response I'll give your perspective is: I think a better way of framing it is organized vs fragmented as opposed to rational vs irrational. Israel has a stable, empowered, central authority, while Palestine does not. To call the latter simply 'irrational' ignores the fact that it isn't a single entity, and may be composed of many rational actors with differing incentives. Even a single person can act rationally at all points in time and still appear irrational over some window. The more chaotic an environment, the less rational it's constituents will appear over a given window of time or geography.
Israel depends on several things to be true and any one or two of them being false probably means end of state
1. Israel has much stronger economy than neighboring states. Hi tech army is expensive 2. Strong internal cohesion with no widespread protests/division or civil war. 3. Modern weapons systems are exclusively available to Israel 4. Strong US support with both money and political cover 5. Arabs not becoming majority in Israel thru demographics 6. Arab states continue to be in shitty state
Specifically
3 may not be true for long with China investing in military capabilities 4 is not assured with woke anti-colonialism ideology and AOC/Tlaib/Ilhan increasing influence on Dem party.
All Palestinians need to do is not to give up. Israel need to win every single time as there is no recovery from loss.
There is argument that strategically Israel is at the strongest moment and it can get most concessions from Palestinians now. In future it may end up in much worse bargaining position.
Why would the Israeli government want to do anything to resolve the Palestinian situation when they gain so much from allowing it to continue at a low level?
This topic is too political to have a nuanced internet discussion and quickly dissolved into weird anti-semitism most of the time.
How is it better to only respond with proportionate responses? If you were known as generally a good country, but could go mad at the drop of a hat, other countries would take even more steps to avoid harming you, wouldn't they?
At the same time, if you were known of flattening neighborhods or even entire cities, your enemies wouldn't be able to hide among civilians.
In either case you trade of more deaths now, for fewer dead in the future.
As horrible as it sounds, either the losing side needs to accept reality and concede (disbanding UNRWA would be a giant step in the right direction to force that issue), or the war should resume, and the gloves and restraints need to come off, until one or the other side sues for peace.
This is the only way to end this conflict. Otherwise it is going to simmer forever. Without the cost for continuing the conflict being made very high, it will continue. The cost for Israel to protect its citizens is very high. The cost for launching attacks against Israelis needs to be disproportionately high for a change in political approach to be considered.
There is a massive difference between guns on automated fire control and an AI aiming missiles.
One could argue that, by making the fire control guaranteed, the border might stop being challenged and deaths thus go down. (Nobody to taunt, either.)
Landmines work by the same principle. Many killed by landmines are children.
> 87% of the casualties were civilians and 47% were children (less than 18 years old).
Not really. Mine fields are not certain death. They don’t always have the opportunity to announce themselves. Guns on automated fire control have the option of announcing themselves prior to engaging. They can also be turned off, something not easy to do with mines.
It’s painful but necessary to note that Hamas have a track record of weaponising children [1]. A child approaching the border is thus not guaranteed safe, and could reasonably be fired upon by a human or a gun on automated fire control. (Not arguing for killing kids. Just that “kids could get killed” isn’t an effective argument against this weapons platform.)
War is terrible. I don’t think automatic guns make it significantly more terrible. (Landmines do.)
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Use_of_child_suicide_bombers...
In particular, you don't set up a few thousand roboguns and then leave them there when the conflict is over, which is responsible for most of the civilian deaths you're referring to, including those of children.
That makes no sense to me. Children being killed by landmines is an example of a lack of fire control. If the land mine had fire control it could detect enemy soldiers then children wouldn't have to die.
Except it's not a border, it's more like a massive concentration camp. Plus, the kill zone is hundreds of meters inwards.
Defining an area as a kill zone and a bomb that is dropped on a particular area aren't all that different.
They are.
And a centralized AI will be needed to coordinate all of the autonomous weapon systems and react faster than the bad guys--SkyNet is coming too.
Why?
At a tactical level, an AI to coordinate a battlefield makes sense. (Speed of light means local computing has an advantage, particularly with directed energy weapons.) And an AI to advise on strategy, and coördinate those battlefield AIs, makes sense.
But while battles are mechanical, war is political. At the point that the human becomes replaceable we’d have an AI substitute for government, which is a long way away.
For grand strategic concerns, we have nukes, and those still fly slowly and detectably enough that an AI commanding counterstrike is unnecessary. (Unless submarine platforms become detectable and thus destroyable in a first strike.)
I think this will further reduce conflict between advanced nations (robots killing robots just becomes a stalemate) and will intensely escalate any asymmetric conflicts where one advanced nation can crush whoever without having to pay the price of deploying humans (think CIA drone strikes).
Atomic weapons are forties technology, and even nations as locked down, and downtrodden like North Korea, or Israel (as it was in sixties) can not only make one, but seemingly genuinely capable of keeping it hidden against modern spy, and nuclear detection tech.
And nuclear weapons aren't a binary either. North Korea has demonstrated the actual bomb, but their delivery systems are still far from reliable. Their rockets might technically have the range to threaten the US, but what are the chances they could actually hit their target? And how many launch vehicles do they realistically have? Not likely enough to seriously threated any other nuclear powers. And this after making decades of enormous political and economic sacrifices to pursue nuclear weapons. I don't think most countries will feel tempted to follow their lead.
Much more relevant theatre range weapons are things even NK can manufacture. I was very surprised to learn that North Korea not only designed a working cruise missile with their economy, but had a working terrain hugging flight on it.
If you dropped a bomb of a certain type and strength on a random coordinate in <country> how many people do you kill on average?
A 1Mt device might only have a 50% chance of killing 1+ people if detonated at the proper altitude at a random location within the US, (47% of the US is uninhabited) but average 1000 deaths (~6mi lethal radius, US overall population density of 90p/sqmi).
Of course we will. It's not as though they're programming themselves. Somebody has to tell the computer what to do.
We program our robots with our prejudices[1]. If you don't control the machines, you can't change their programming. It's entirely possible that such prejudices are cemented through machines that cannot be influenced or changed except through actions of their owners.
What happens when the owners of these machines are indifferent towards, or outright supportive of, prejudice? History is rife with owners of companies, industries and governments exploiting and furthering prejudice for their own benefit.
[1] https://www.americanbar.org/groups/judicial/publications/jud...
I don't think the problem is with AIs acurrately identifying friends and enemies. You can't solve that 100% anyway, but if it can aid humans and prevent mistakes, all the better. The problem is when you start to build absolutely relentless border drones that can one-shot the enemy, without any possibility for mercy or negotiation.
With weapons, the desired outcome is not to kill, not in most circumstances anyway. In circumstances where it is, it is almost always the desire of an individual wielding a weapon. Normally, the desired outcome is deterrence or defense, and when used proactively, to lessen the enemy's ability to continue to wage the conflict. With deterrence, the threat of death is the deterrent, with defense, killing is the machanism by which the threat is neutralized, and with proactive aggression the goal may or may not include killing, and is more likely to include killing if the enemy's ability to wage conflict is dependent on manpower. In all three scenarios, the desired outcome of developing autonomous military capability is to save lives.
One maybe stupid example is when there were lots of Syrian refugees on the way through Europe in 2015. We learned the hard way that, if people are pushing against your borders, the only way to keep them out is to eventually use force. We were not willing to do so, so we had to accept that and grant people asylum (which I think was the right decision).
Imagine (a bit scifi but for the sake of argument) "border patrol 2000", which will give a warning, then give a more stern warning, then raise a wall, then try rubber bullets, then try to keep you from climbing the wall with a grappling arm, and finally using live rounds. If you are really determined it will eventually have to shoot. Human solderies did shoot in the past but they did also sometimes not shoot, and it always had a political aftermath. But with automatic systems, it is too easy to psychologically detach, and to say it's e.g. the refugees own fault.
Also, having people in the loop reminds at least someone that this is 'real' and that we need to carry on thinking about it. If you can obliterate enemies' bodies and the only duty on people is to restock the ammo I think that reduces the moral burden of conflict in an unacceptable way.
Its time governments around the world invest in quality gamers to help them fight their battles.
I can't help but think, in a war between two nations fighting exclusively with such tech (not too far fetched for my generation or my kids generation), war itself becomes comical and essentially a measure of economic strength. How quickly can you build these robots and how quickly can you deploy them.
Imagine a general shouting orders over a bunch of acne-faced teenagers trying to win a war for his country.
Once you have two sides with automated offensive capability, we are one bug away from the kind of mistakes that, during the Cold War, were intercepted by humans in the loop. I'm not sure how this can NOT end badly.