[LINK] Killer robots and military ethics

[Roger Clarke]

At 12:18 +1000 19/7/13, Craig Sanders wrote:
>hah! in reality, the blame will be booted downstairs to the lowest
>programmer.

Immunity of the powerful is a bit more sophisticated these days.

There's no longer any need for a Suenderbock.

Plausible deniability starts at the top, but it goes all the way down:
'the foot-soldiers are only following orders'
'don't blame me, I'm only the piano player'
'ain't nobody here but us chickens'

Put another way, the buck no longer stops anywhere.

Or maybe it never even gets started.

________________________________________________________________________

At 12:18 +1000 19/7/13, Craig Sanders wrote:
>On Thu, Jul 18, 2013 at 04:57:15PM +1000, Bernard Robertson-Dunn wrote:
>>  I'll ask my usual question when it comes to autonomous systems:
>>
>>  Who is responsible for its actions?
>>
>>  If a robot "takes out" a village of innocent civilians, who pays the
>>  price? Who gets charged with crimes against humanity? etc, etc.
>
>the answer is obvious: responsibility rests with whoever gave the order
>to deploy the hardware.
>
>possibly also whoever signed off on the code's QA testing to say that it
>was fit and safe for purpose.
>
>and possibly also, whoever wrote the design specs.
>
>
>hah! in reality, the blame will be booted downstairs to the lowest
>programmer.
>
>craig
>
>--
>craig sanders <cas at taz.net.au>
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-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

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