Monday, 9 September 2024

On The Loop, No Longer In It

Drones have changed the face of war and are now the preferred choice of attack compared to a million pound a time missile which were beyond the financial means of most nations but with cheaper drones, almost anyone can send one to shoot up somewhere else but the problem they have is that they are operated by people sitting thousands of miles away in some cases which makes it's manoeuvres delayed which means evading missiles are almost impossible but the military are on it, they are creating drones which pilot themselves.
BAE Systems have a prototype Drone which the Ministry of Defence describe as a: 'fully autonomous craft that can fly deep into enemy territory to collect intelligence, drop bombs and defend itself against manned and other unmanned enemy aircraft' and the last killer line that it 'would have no need for operator input'.
The one saving grace of killing machines sent into conflict is that it would have a human in the loop to abort missions but that seems to have subtly changed to what the MOD called ''on the loop' rather than in it.
No idea what that means but it comes down to machines sent to an area with orders to kill and we have seen where that leads with drone attacks on ambulances mistaken for tanks and members of funeral processions killed as the human appeared to see an armed mob.
As well as higher death rates amongst civilians, as humans will no longer be sent to fight, the other danger is that  war becomes less of a last resort, it is only the political fall-out from the high death rate amongst their own military that has caused some wars to be cut short but  politicians and the public who have been 'sold' a war won't be so concerned about losing autonomous machines.
As we pass our war-making decisions over to machines and AI perhaps all future wars will be fought between each army's robots, resulting in no human casualties. Until, that is, the more intelligent robots make a truce with one another and decide to turn on the humans who sent them to fight instead.

1 comment:

Not really a blog said...

circa 2010, i arranged for ibm to brief my ceo on Watson. their AI system that won jeopardy and chess matches.

one story told was how in mere months, watson was more accurate at diagnosing illnesses than head nurses and doctors at a hospital using watson in a trial/research project.

since then, the google smart car has driven multi-million miles without causing an accident. as have many other smart cars. no known human can claim such an accident free driving record.

so, now, comes releasing a drone over/in a target area. based on human history of rogue combatants, friendly fire, and other human error, is the drone likely to do worse?

when AI is proposing criteria for selecting targets, identifying targets, designing drones, constructing drones, arming and fueling drones, launching drones, navigating drones, and initiating fire, then we will have likely gone to far...

until we are nearing those conditions chill out... because Putin, the Ayatollah, the little fat guy in NKor, and Xi don't really give a damn what anybody thinks about the topic.