Anti-war means Anti-Robot war too
Anti-war means Anti-Robot war too
Computers care little about air pressure or high G turns
[Image source]
One must understand that the limiting factor in a fighter jet is not the jet, but the human. There is only so much physical stress, due to high speed tight turn acceleration, that a human can withstand. Get rid of the human, and the plane could do far more.
The equivalent is true of many mobile offensive military platforms.
As the most dangerous of the "nuclear triad" the submarine is a classic. One would not need to maintain a close internal air pressure when quickly rising and falling through the pressure gradients of the seas. This has revolutionised submarine warfare already.
We need an amendment to the laws of war to stop this new autonomous arms race, and we need it yesterday.
The capabilities of machine learning based autonomous systems have been demonstrated in controlled environments. For example, Grand Chess Masters beaten by computers, and Champion Go players beaten by computers and world leading players of computer games like DOTA beaten by computers. But, the physical challenges on the human competitors are very small in these circumstances. Things are very different in a fighter jet or submarine.
Proposed law of war
Every mobile piece of offensive warfare, i.e those which contain munitions, including those which utilize electromagnetics, must have a human within them or in close proximity (< 100m) to them while they are moving.
Back in the Day
One should not forget that people have been thinking about this problem for over 70 years, yet nothing has been done. Here are Isaac Asimov's three Laws of Robotics from 1950:
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
How far we have not come.
Sources
AI-Piloted Fighter Jets, Bruce Schneier
Status-6 Oceanic Multipurpose System, Wikipedia
Russia’s Gigantic Submarine, Belgorod, Sails For The First Time, Naval News
Russia to Deploy Submarine Armed With Nuclear Drone in Pacific, The Defense Post
Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov, Wikipedia
AlphaGo versus Lee Sedol, Wikipedia
OpenAI’s Dota 2 AI steamrolls world champion e-sports team with back-to-back victories, The Verge
Three Laws of Robotics, Wikipedia