Risks of the AI going amok set aside there’s something appealing in not risking human lifes during conflicts. Karmically or economically wise. Also you remove the limitations of human bodies -suddenly your airframe can give 100% of its capabilities without turning the pilot in a milkshake.
Removing humans from your side of the war lowers the cost of going to war and allows for even more centralized power. It’s a lot easier to do morally bankrupt acts if you don’t need to convinced a group of human soldiers to do it. Clearly you can anyway a lot of the time, but going for the robots is a lot cheaper/less risky.
It’s pretty obvious why powerful people would want this and why it would be terrible for the rest of us even without worrying about a hypothetical sky net future.
It only sounds problematic to someone who cares about the lives of ordinary people. But that's not the sort of person who dedicates their whole life to increasing their own wealth and power by any means necessary. Those are the people that get to make the decisions.
And under even broader definitions of AI, there's landmines. Those have been around for a long time already. Their "AI" is just monumentally stupid, I wouldn't mind having them be a bit more discriminating about whose limb to blow off.
I look forward to them being equipped with the ability to refuel by consuming biomass, self replicating, and having unbreakable encryption so they can't be stopped!
Is the US preparing for a war with China? Cuz it certainly sounds like it.
Quote from the article:
The Pentagon is working toward deploying swarms of thousands of AI-enabled drones, according to a notice published earlier this year.
In a speech in August, US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Kathleen Hicks, said technology like AI-controlled drone swarms would enable the US to offset China's People's Liberation Army's (PLA) numerical advantage in weapons and people.
"We'll counter the PLA's mass with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, harder to beat," she said, reported Reuters.