Fascinating post. I agree that we shouldn’t compare LAWs to (a) hypothetical, perfectly consequentialist, ethically coherent, well-trained philosopher-soldiers, but rather to (b) soldiers as the order-following, rules-of-engagement-implementing, semi-roboticized agents they’re actually trained to become.
A key issue is the LAWs’ chain of commands’ legitimacy, and how it’s secured.
Mencius Moldbug had some interesting suggestions in Patchwork about how a ‘cryptographic chain of command’ over LAWs could actually increase the legitimacy and flexibility of governance over lethal force. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XG2WNF1
Suppose a state has an armada/horde/flock of formidable LAWS that can potentially destroy or pacify the civilian populace—an ‘invincible robot army’. Who is permitted to issue orders? If the current political leader is voted out of office, but they don’t want to leave, and they still have the LAWS ‘launch codes’, what keeps them from using LAWS to subvert democracy? In a standard human-soldier/secret service agent scenario, the soldiers and agents have been socialized to respect the outcomes of democratic elections, and would balk at defending the would-be dictator. They would literally escort him/her out of the White House. In the LAWs scenario, the soldiers/agents would be helpless against local LAWs under the head of state. The robot army would escort the secret service agents out of the White House until they accept the new dictator.
In other words, I’m not as worried about interstate war or intrastate protests; I’m worried about LAWs radically changing the incentives and opportunities for outright dictatorship. Under the Second Amendment, the standard countervailing force against dictatorship is supposed to be civilian ownership of near-equivalent tech that poses a credible threat against dictatorial imposition of force. But in this invincible-robot-army scenario, that implies civilians would need to be able to own and deploy LAWs too, either individually (so they can function as aggrieved tyrant-assassins) or collectively (so they can form revolutionary militias against gov’t LAWs).
I guess this is just another example of an alignment problem—in this case between the LAWs and the citizens, with the citizens somehow able to collectively over-rule a dictator’s ‘launch codes’. Maybe every citizen has their own crypto key, and they do some kind of blockchain vote system about what the LAWs do and who they obey. This then opens the way to a majoritarian mob rule with LAWs forcibly displacing/genociding targeted minorites—or the LAWs must embody some ‘human/constitutional rights interrupts’ that prevent such bullying.
Any suggestions on how to solve this ‘chain of command’ problem?
All I can say is that if you are going to have machines which can fulfill all the organizational and tactical responsibilities of humans, to create and lead large formations, then they are probably going to have some kind of general intelligence like humans do. That means we can expect and demand that they have a decent moral compass.
But in this invincible-robot-army scenario, that implies civilians would need to be able to own and deploy LAWs too, either individually (so they can function as aggrieved tyrant-assassins) or collectively (so they can form revolutionary militias against gov’t LAWs).
We don’t have civilian tanks or civilian fighter jets or lots of other things. Revolutions are almost always asymmetric.
All I can say is that if you are going to have machines which can fulfill all the organizational and tactical responsibilities of humans, to create and lead large formations, then they are probably going to have some kind of general intelligence like humans do.
Couldn’t it be the case, though, that you have a number of machines that together fulfill all the organizational and tactical responsibilities of humans without having any one of them have general intelligence? Given that humans already function as cogs in a machine (a point you make very well from your experience), this seems very plausible.
In that case, the intelligence could be fairly narrow, and I would think we should not bet too much on the AIs having a moral compass.
Fascinating post. I agree that we shouldn’t compare LAWs to (a) hypothetical, perfectly consequentialist, ethically coherent, well-trained philosopher-soldiers, but rather to (b) soldiers as the order-following, rules-of-engagement-implementing, semi-roboticized agents they’re actually trained to become.
A key issue is the LAWs’ chain of commands’ legitimacy, and how it’s secured.
Mencius Moldbug had some interesting suggestions in Patchwork about how a ‘cryptographic chain of command’ over LAWs could actually increase the legitimacy and flexibility of governance over lethal force. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XG2WNF1
Suppose a state has an armada/horde/flock of formidable LAWS that can potentially destroy or pacify the civilian populace—an ‘invincible robot army’. Who is permitted to issue orders? If the current political leader is voted out of office, but they don’t want to leave, and they still have the LAWS ‘launch codes’, what keeps them from using LAWS to subvert democracy? In a standard human-soldier/secret service agent scenario, the soldiers and agents have been socialized to respect the outcomes of democratic elections, and would balk at defending the would-be dictator. They would literally escort him/her out of the White House. In the LAWs scenario, the soldiers/agents would be helpless against local LAWs under the head of state. The robot army would escort the secret service agents out of the White House until they accept the new dictator.
In other words, I’m not as worried about interstate war or intrastate protests; I’m worried about LAWs radically changing the incentives and opportunities for outright dictatorship. Under the Second Amendment, the standard countervailing force against dictatorship is supposed to be civilian ownership of near-equivalent tech that poses a credible threat against dictatorial imposition of force. But in this invincible-robot-army scenario, that implies civilians would need to be able to own and deploy LAWs too, either individually (so they can function as aggrieved tyrant-assassins) or collectively (so they can form revolutionary militias against gov’t LAWs).
I guess this is just another example of an alignment problem—in this case between the LAWs and the citizens, with the citizens somehow able to collectively over-rule a dictator’s ‘launch codes’. Maybe every citizen has their own crypto key, and they do some kind of blockchain vote system about what the LAWs do and who they obey. This then opens the way to a majoritarian mob rule with LAWs forcibly displacing/genociding targeted minorites—or the LAWs must embody some ‘human/constitutional rights interrupts’ that prevent such bullying.
Any suggestions on how to solve this ‘chain of command’ problem?
All I can say is that if you are going to have machines which can fulfill all the organizational and tactical responsibilities of humans, to create and lead large formations, then they are probably going to have some kind of general intelligence like humans do. That means we can expect and demand that they have a decent moral compass.
We don’t have civilian tanks or civilian fighter jets or lots of other things. Revolutions are almost always asymmetric.
Couldn’t it be the case, though, that you have a number of machines that together fulfill all the organizational and tactical responsibilities of humans without having any one of them have general intelligence? Given that humans already function as cogs in a machine (a point you make very well from your experience), this seems very plausible.
In that case, the intelligence could be fairly narrow, and I would think we should not bet too much on the AIs having a moral compass.
If they are narrow in focus, then it might be easier to provide ethical guidance over their scope of operations.