welcome any evidence you have on these points, but your scenario seems to a) assume limited offensive capability development, b) willingness and ability to implement layers of defensive measures at all “soft” targets, c) focus only on drones, not many other possible lethal AWSs, and d) still produces considerable amount of cost—both in countermeasures and in psychological costs—that would seem to suggest a steep price to be paid to have lethal AWSs even in a rosy scenario.
I’m saying there are substantial constraints on using cheap drones to attack civilians en masse, some of them are more-or-less-costly preparation measures and some of them are not. Even without defensive preparation, I just don’t see these things as being so destructive.
If we imagine offensive capability development then we should also imagine defensive capability development.
What other AWSs are we talking about if not drones?
In addition to potentially being more precise, lethal AWSs will be less attributable to their source, and present less risk to use (both in physical and financial costs).
Hmm. Have there been any unclaimed drone attacks so far, and would that change with autonomy? Moreover, if such ambiguity does arise, would that not also mitigate the risk of immediate retaliation and escalation? My sense here is that there are conflicting lines of reasoning going on here. How can AWSs increase the risks of dangerous escalation, but also be perceived as safe and risk-free by users?
I’m not sure how to interpret this. The lower end of the ranges are the lower end of ranges given by various estimators. The mean of this range is somewhere in the middle, depending how you weight them.
I mean, we’re uncertain about the 1-7Bn figure and uncertain about the 0.5-20% figure. When you multiply them together the low x low is implausibly low and the high x high is implausibly high. But the mean x mean would be closer to the lower end. So if the means are 4Bn and 10% then the product is 40M which is closer to the lower end of your 0.5-150M range. Yes I realize this makes little difference (assuming your 1-7Bn and 0.5-0.20% estimates are normal distributions). It does seem apparent to me now that the escalation-to-nuclear-warfare risk is much more important than some of these direct impacts.
The question of whether small-scale conflicts will increase enough to counterbalance the life-saving of substituting AWs for soldiers is, I agree, hard predict. But unless you take the optimistic end of the spectrum (as I guess you have) I don’t see how the numbers can balance at all when including large-scale wars.
I think they’d probably save lives in a large-scale war for the same reasons. You say that they wouldn’t save lives in a total nuclear war, that makes sense if civilians are attacked just as severely as soldiers. But large-scale wars may not be like this. Even nuclear wars may not involve major attacks on cities (but yes I realize that the EV is greater for those that do).
This is a very strange argument to me. Saying something is problematic, and being willing in principle not to do it, seems like a pretty necessary precursor to making an agreement with others not to do it.
I suppose that’s fine, I was thinking more about concretely telling people not to do it, before any such agreement.
You also have to be in principle willing to do something if you want to credibly threaten the other party and convince them not to do it.
Moreover, if something is ethically wrong, we should be willing to not do it even if others do it
Well there are some cases where a problematic weapon is so problematic that we should unilaterally forsake it even if we can’t get an agreement. But there are also some cases where it’s just problematic enough that a treaty would be a good thing, but unilaterally forsaking it would do net harm by degrading our relative military position. (Of course this depends on who the audience is, but this discourse over AWSs seems to primarily take place in the US and some other liberal democracies.)
I’m saying there are substantial constraints on using cheap drones to attack civilians en masse, some of them are more-or-less-costly preparation measures and some of them are not. Even without defensive preparation, I just don’t see these things as being so destructive.
If we imagine offensive capability development then we should also imagine defensive capability development.
What other AWSs are we talking about if not drones?
Hmm. Have there been any unclaimed drone attacks so far, and would that change with autonomy? Moreover, if such ambiguity does arise, would that not also mitigate the risk of immediate retaliation and escalation? My sense here is that there are conflicting lines of reasoning going on here. How can AWSs increase the risks of dangerous escalation, but also be perceived as safe and risk-free by users?
I mean, we’re uncertain about the 1-7Bn figure and uncertain about the 0.5-20% figure. When you multiply them together the low x low is implausibly low and the high x high is implausibly high. But the mean x mean would be closer to the lower end. So if the means are 4Bn and 10% then the product is 40M which is closer to the lower end of your 0.5-150M range. Yes I realize this makes little difference (assuming your 1-7Bn and 0.5-0.20% estimates are normal distributions). It does seem apparent to me now that the escalation-to-nuclear-warfare risk is much more important than some of these direct impacts.
I think they’d probably save lives in a large-scale war for the same reasons. You say that they wouldn’t save lives in a total nuclear war, that makes sense if civilians are attacked just as severely as soldiers. But large-scale wars may not be like this. Even nuclear wars may not involve major attacks on cities (but yes I realize that the EV is greater for those that do).
I suppose that’s fine, I was thinking more about concretely telling people not to do it, before any such agreement.
You also have to be in principle willing to do something if you want to credibly threaten the other party and convince them not to do it.
Well there are some cases where a problematic weapon is so problematic that we should unilaterally forsake it even if we can’t get an agreement. But there are also some cases where it’s just problematic enough that a treaty would be a good thing, but unilaterally forsaking it would do net harm by degrading our relative military position. (Of course this depends on who the audience is, but this discourse over AWSs seems to primarily take place in the US and some other liberal democracies.)