If I read it right, he has stopped working on a form of artificial intelligence because it could potentially (or inevitably) be used to create androids indistinguishable from humans that are carrying nuclear or biological payloads inside of them, presumably to be detonated in a densely populated area.
Taking as a given, like he does, that the advancement and spread of technology are inevitable, wouldn't it still be many times more likely that people would just detonate suitcase nukes themselves before they decide to hide them in expensive and and potentially problematic robots? There's surely no shortage of people willing to die to do that, and even if there were it's unlikely that setting a bomb on a half hour timer and getting out of dodge will affect the success rate.
That frankly ridiculous scenario aside, I can imagine much more likely applications that computers capable of solving Bongard problems (which sound pretty cool) could be used in war, like automated drones that are able to independently identify targets.
The whole posting appears to lie somewhere between an immature rant and a publicity stunt. A suitcase would both elicit less suspicion and always (?) be easier/cheaper to design/develop/purchase/deploy than a humanoid robot.
A hundred years from now, it will probably be trivial to set up X-ray scanners (or whatever they will be using) to secure most urban areas from entering by humanoid robots; much more difficult to do so with suitcases, cars, and trucks which people have to bring with them for business, otherwise urban centers would not exist in the first place.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves by describing ways to counteract current 2012 destructive technologies with technology that "will probably be trivial" to implement in 2112.
Convincing humanoid androids with enough space for a nuke are most definitely not a current 2012 destructive technology. Walking is still a challenge, let alone any sort of intelligence.
I'm not really clear on what an AI has to do with it though. A remote controlled robot would be easier, cheaper, and more reliable, but even that's unnecessarily complicated. If you wanted to move something heavy through a crowded area without attracting attention, you'd just hide it in any of the common wheeled things we see every day. Like a wheelchair. Or a car. Or a truck. I'm pretty sure terrorists have "Let's put this bomb in a truck" figured out already. The 2010 Times Square guy solved the transportation issue, he just wasn't good at making bombs.
EDIT: More to the point, almost any technology has the potential to be used for purposes that we don't like. The real question is about the people who resort to those tactics, why they choose to, and what means they have access to. The vast majority of the world is against nuking large groups of people, with androids or not. The ones that do don't usually have access to nuclear material, bioweapons, or advanced robotics.
If anything, a "nukedroid," would be the next generation of ICBM, built to avoid missile defense systems. I don't think science fiction's common prediction of widespread androids is realistic, and there are plenty of equally far fetched weapon predictions that would be difficult to defend. What about a nuclear mole-bot that burrows under a city from hundreds of miles away before surfacing and blowing up? Or nanobots designed to infiltrate through a water supply? For the foreseeable future, metal bullets and explosives in conventional cases will be the most economical form of killing people and blowing stuff up.
You're misinterpreting the premise of the article. The article is talking about ethics, not about some sort of danger. From an ethical perspective, if using a nuclear bomb is justified, then the delivery mechanism is irrelevant.
However, in the case of the sentient atomic bomb (and I think talking about it as an android obscures this question) we get in to stickier terrain. A sentient atomic bomb is a sentient being whose sole purpose in life is essentially genocide. That is definitely morally repugnant to me, and by extension I'd say it's problematic in any sane ethical system.
Creating a sentient atomic bomb would be no different in my ethical system from raising a child from birth to be the guidance system for an atomic bomb airplane.
Homicide, not genocide. Unless you think that all weapons over a certain destructive potential are necessarily used to eradicate certain ethnic groups as opposed to others.
That's Humpty Dumpty thinking. You can interpret the words however you like, but effective communication requires some sort of agreement about definitions. For most people, and in dictionaries, "genocide" specifically does not mean "lots of people", no matter how you personally choose to interpret it.
It is a very specific term, referring to violent crimes
committed against groups with the intent to destroy
the existence of the group.
By all means interpret it differently, just don't expect to communicate effectively.
(And yes, I know that "decimate" used to mean "kill one in ten" and now people use it to mean "kill nearly everyone". I know language changes, but "genocide" is still rather specific, and has not, to my knowledge, broadly changed in the way you intimate.)
I'd say a destroying a city definitely meets that definition. Deliberately destroying part of a national group. Also, the inhabitants of a city are definitely an ethnicity (though that depends on how restrictive a definition of ethnicity you use.) So, sure, you kill a lot of people it's not genocide, but you systematically eradicate a city, I'd call it genocide.
The inhabitants of a city are not limited to a single ethnicity, so it's still fundamentally wrong. However, this exchange won't get us any further. I have no doubt you won't be convinced, so there seems nothing to be gained by continuing. Feel free to use language as you will.
> pertaining to or characteristic of a people, especially a group (ethnic group) sharing a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like.
The inhabitants of a city usually share a common and distinctive culture (and the like.) You're using extremely narrow definitions of genocide as well as ethnicity. Both are vague terms.
Humans don't carry nukes because fissile material is _heavy_. Add onto that the shielding to make sure the person can even carry it without becoming gravely ill very shortly into their delivery and the fact a suitcase nuke or dirty bomb has never been personally delivered is not very surprising.
The ridiculous part is that making an android carry this payload doesn't change the nature of the payload. Heavy, fissile material will still give off signatures that will trip all manner of alarms.
Fatman, the plutonium implosion bomb that was detonated over Nagasaki, used only 6.2kg of Pu. Also, the Pu-239 used in weapons doesn't require a lot of shielding. There are plenty accounts of people handling nuclear weapon cores that have had only a light plating of other metals or with only thick gloves.
What probably is quite heavy is all of the associated components that you need to make a bomb - the chemical explosives, tamper etc.
The W54, one smallest nuclear warhead anyone is admitting to making, was about 23kg - although this did have a very small yield.
There are some much lighter elements you can use. curium-247 would be ideal.
A long half life (so you can store it), the radiation is all alpha particles, which are undetectable remotely, and is safe to handle (no shielding necessary, just cover it). (However the decay products are much more dangerous, so it's not a total panacea, fresh curium would be desired.)
It has a critical mass of about 7Kg, so it's easy to carry.
Of course the hard part is making it.....
You also have to refine it carefully, since all the contaminants are very radioactive. (However mixing other isotopes of curium with it is not a serious problem, so refining it is not incredibly hard.)
Yeah I was struck by that too, although I didn't pick up on anything that seemed overtly satirical.
None of the arguments he made directly supported the conclusions he jumped to. I agree that there are serious ethical concerns pertaining to AI research that ought to be thoroughly examined, but I fail to see how any of these arguments actually support that thesis.
> surely no shortage of people willing to die to do that
I think there is a major shortage of people willing to be suicide bombers. There is a grand fallacy out there that the world is full of suicidal terrorists. It is not.
Suicide bombers from Palestine were generally tricked or extorted. Those that were acting on their own volition generally could not detonate themselves, which is why bystanders had detonators.
There is strong evidence that most of the 9/11 hijackers did not know it was a suicide mission.
That said, under orders, extortion, or trickery, a human could definitely sneak a bomb into a city.
Only those in the cockpit needed to know. The rest were in charge of subduing the passengers and could have been told they were hijacking the plane for ransom, or to meet demands, or any other story. If you consider the long lead up to 9/11, keeping most operatives in the dark makes the most sense for an Al Qaeda planners since it reduces the chances of a member talking or dropping out.
"FBI investigators have officially concluded that 11 of the 19 terrorists who hijacked the aircraft on 11 September did not know they were on a suicide mission"
Interesting. Good link. Yet, that still means that 8 of them knew. Not like it was 1 out of 19.
There have also been plenty of other suicide bombers at much smaller targets. Generally I don't think they are that excited about blowing themselves up, more they are willing to do it to take care of their families financially when they don't see any other options.
Taking as a given, like he does, that the advancement and spread of technology are inevitable, wouldn't it still be many times more likely that people would just detonate suitcase nukes themselves before they decide to hide them in expensive and and potentially problematic robots? There's surely no shortage of people willing to die to do that, and even if there were it's unlikely that setting a bomb on a half hour timer and getting out of dodge will affect the success rate.
That frankly ridiculous scenario aside, I can imagine much more likely applications that computers capable of solving Bongard problems (which sound pretty cool) could be used in war, like automated drones that are able to independently identify targets.