Comments on: Beware – Dangerous Robots!

By: The Ethics of Autonomous robots « Fourcultures

The Ethics of Autonomous robots « Fourcultures — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 13:22:07 +0000

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By: fourcultures

fourcultures — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 12:22:42 +0000

Thanks for your illuminating comments Ben. I quite agree with you. ‘Governance’ is clearly the dominant military research approach, and my post was pointing out that there are also other possible ways of looking at the issue. The analysis here implies there may be a conflict between the Hierarchical defense department view (managing everything), and the Individualist view of some politicians (winning without accountability). Note that while we did ‘tear our collective hair out’ over a number of issues relating to the Gulf, including torture, certain highly influential politicians, Dick Cheney, for instance, emphatically did not. The Grid-Group Cultural Theory perspective would be that this wasn’t amoral within the framework of the Individualist worldview, but it probably would be immoral from the perspective of the other three cultural biases. We have competing moralities of warfare and military innovation that correspond to the four cultures of Grid-Group analysis. If we really want to make robots behave ‘more humanely than humans’ we need to take this into account. The point is that moral relativism is a feature of human social organisation, but it is very far from ‘anything goes’. This is a constrained pluralism: only four things go. Those who think it’s all about ‘governing’ ignore the other three approaches at their peril.

By: Ben Mazzotta

Ben Mazzotta — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:19:51 +0000

Interesting post. As near as I can tell, the Governance perspective holds the greatest sway in academic security studies. There is no accepted norm or precedent for assigning responsibility with autonomous, lethal robots. As these robots appear on the battlefield, different militaries will inevitably develop different approaches to both governance and accountability. Proportionality may be very much in the eye of the beholder, witness the recent Gaza conflict.

Concerning Individualism: that, to me sounds like an amoral perspective on combat. While an amoral approach to war is possible, I am skeptical that major powers will openly discuss it. We tore our collective hair out at the ethics of decisions over torture and atomic weapons, and rightfully so, even when the commanders in charge were convinced of the validity of the decisions made. Abhorrent practices in war are always wrapped in normative frameworks that necessitate and justify brutality.

Fatalism is many decades off; the international community isn’t prepared to give up land mines, let alone as-yet-undeveloped robots.