One of issues with our debate was not just what exactly did they mean by autonomous and also by guard, in other words what was it capable of doing, who would be responsible blah blah. On the face of it, it may seem an intelligence answer to covering large areas of land which could be largely impossible to man, argument done? No, of course, being an ethics discussion there had to be more and yes it was about the semantics, namely the detail. The story focuses on tower sentries, used for observation, but our discussion carry on to "robots" that could be deployed to replace men and jeeps, surely a machine fitted with the relevant technology could out do man?
Let's consider this:
- robots do not get lazy
- robots do not sleep
- robots do not suffer from indecision
- robots do as they are told
- robots do not have morals
- robots do not have feelings
- robots can enter places humans cannot
- robots can survive longer than man
- robots can offer a lower error margin than man
Let's consider the upside of humans:
- human can make judgement calls (intuition)
- humans can have prior experience
- human are tried and tested (we've been around thousands of years)
- er, struggling now ??
Okay that was a quick overview and you could argue all day about man vs machine, but surely they are two different approaches to an unachievable goal or unrealistic solution. Every country suffers border issues, from illegal entry to illegal exit (some countries forbid movement from their country's - shocking maybe). Anything that aides the work is surely a good solution, but now consider what happens in this scenario. You have a autonomous sentry tower, with communications facilities and a rifle, a person is shot at for breaking the rules and crossing the border - who is to blame?
Did you blame the person? Did you think to ask if the person was hit? Did you ask if they were leaving or entering the country? Did you ask why this happened? Okay I could have been more clear, so let's simply say the person was shot and killed, for entering the country - that simplifies your reasoning and questions surely? So now we are assuming they had no right to enter and were subsequently warned and the country's armed forces observed the incident. Clear cut then, the person is to blame for breaking a rule?
Morally speaking what was wrong with the above, anything? Well let's consider the actors in this situation, there was the country involved, a person crossing and probably a company who built the autonomous machine. Now tell me is this killing morally justified by the company who created it, how would you feel? What if it was an accident, let's say the person was disguising themselves and was a local, entitled to cross the border, who is to blame? Would you sue the government for deploying the machine, does the manufacturer have to justify itself for selling something that can kill, how about the engineers who designed and built it, are they ultimately responsible? This is where ethics can get complicated, no matter if you believe if it's clear cut, not everyone has the same ethics, or reasoning. You may have also neglected the MAIN actor in this - the robot, surely it is to blame, it pulled the trigger? Of course we can go deeper again and suggest the person who coded the software instructions should ultimately be blamed, since this person basically provided the robot with a form of reasoning, rules to follow.
Are you still of the opinion the robot acted correctly and is free from blame? Perhaps you should consider the ethics of the actor who actually was affected - the border crossing human. We never asked what there intent was, what they did, what they intended to do when they crossed, did they have prior intelligence on the person? Maybe this robot saved the nation from a terrorist, maybe the robot is a terrorist, you cannot muse the future affects if the person had crossed, because that is a non-event, it is in the realm of the unknown.
Hopefully you have thought, ethics is not a black and white subject, because if the border guard was a human the event could have been somewhat difficult. Soldiers killing people tried in court for manslaughter or murder, think this has not happened. Think again, by replacing us robots, surely the ethical situation is made worse, sure they can be made more efficient. But at a time when we are replacing humans with machines to increase production, save money and improve efficiency, you have to wonder did we consider the ethics of replacing man with machine????
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