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Experts alarmed over AI in military as Gaza turns into “testing ground” for US-made war robots
https://www.salon.com/2024/03/09/expert ... de-robots/

"Autonomous weapons “inherently dehumanize the people targeted and make it easier to tolerate widespread killing,” which is in violation of international human rights law.

A playground for autonomous AI war robots... A playground where, in the words of Pattern-chaser, people are locked in and imprisoned.

..imprisoning the Palestinian people in the two small enclaves that remain of their country

Evidence for imprisonment of the people in Gaza:

(2024) Urgent Attention: Israel deprives Gaza of drinking water
Israel is not only bombing the people in Gaza but also cuts the population off from access to drinking water.
Source: La Via Campesina | The Guardian | UN expert: Israel must stop using drinking water as a weapon of war

Future of Life
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Max Tegmark, a professor at MIT and cofounder of the Future of Life Institute, a nonprofit that opposes autonomous weapons, says AI weapons should be “stigmatized and banned like biological weapons.”.

Personally, I have seen what good management can do to fix human culture related problems. An example is a police chief in New York who, when faced with an apparent unfixable situation of police corruption, invented a unique strategy to curb both corruption and crime, and turned the whole story around.

Before the war in Iraq, a group of scientists argued in Scientific American that the war could be prevented by solving the extreme water crisis in the country, which is another example that good management can turn people into friends, also in the Middle East.

The lack of access to clean drinking water led to widespread public unrest and protests in Iraq, causing the emergence of the Islamic State (IS) and its violent campaign against the government.

In reality, the water infrastructure was intentionally destroyed by NATO while the Iraq government was blamed.

UN specialists today speak of an intentional genocide and a war crime, and award winning journalist John Pilger wrote a book titled "Killing The Children of Iraq".

(2021) Intentional genocide: the targeted destruction of Iraq's water systems is a war crime
NATO military forces committed war crimes by depriving civilians of drinking water. The vast majority of the 1.5 million civilian deaths were caused not by the direct impact of bombs but by targeted destruction of water systems.
Source: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
Water under siege in Iraq
https://reliefweb.int/report/iraq/sanct ... q-worth-it

Killing the Children of Iraq
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Children in Iraq
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Why wasn't it chosen to help the people in Iraq, instead of choosing to destroy their access to water by which over 1.5 million innocent people would die?

Sy Borg recently wrote the following status quo retro-perspective idea about the Iraq war.

Since the US killed its hegemony with its Iraq escapades, global cooperation and security have diminished.

the Iraq invasion, with many thousands [1.5 million people] dead, trillions wasted and soft power squandered.

A playground for autonomous war robots, by people who have been depriving the victims from access to drinking water.

And a history of accusation of genocidal strategies. Not just in Iraq, but also in Libya:

(2015) War crime: NATO deliberately destroyed Libya's water infrastructure
The deliberate bombing of Libya's water infrastructure, with the knowledge that doing so would result in massive deaths of the population, is not just a war crime, but a genocidal strategy.
Source: https://theecologist.org/2015/may/14/wa ... astructure

(2021) NATO Killed Civilians in Libya. It's Time to Admit It.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/03/20/na ... -admit-it/

Admit it... Why wasn't it prevented?

If racial hate gets its way, a strive for genocide may be the logical result. What if that strive is built into AI combined with a situation in which, for the higher purpose of that situation (advancement of war technologies), it concerns a pursuit of high efficiency?

I recently read that an Israeli sniper killed a 14 year old girl who stood before a hospital.

Israeli sniper kills Palestinian girl in front of Gaza hospital
https://www.aljazeera.com/program/newsf ... a-hospital

The robots are about to do 'the job' more efficient...

What is your opinion?

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Perhaps the philosophical relevance of this topic is not evident.

The idea that hate is built into AI, which naturally results in genocidal strategy, might provide access to insights into the prospects of AI for humanity.

I once found an early philosophy discussion about the topic on Philosophy Talk where philosophers communicated the vision that war was becoming obsolete.

(2015) The Ethics of Drone Warfare
https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/eth ... ne-warfare

Much encouraging replies from diverse philosophers. To cite some examples:

There is no greater example of mental weakness than the idea that military technology and might is the solution to war. It is this very weakness that fuels our wars. Violence begets violence and nothing more. America has the most technologically advanced military, the most weapons of mass destruction, the largest military budget in the world. It is this might to fight that makes us the very weakest of all, the catalyst of war. And as for Obama killing the most people with drones, I think he will be remembered as President Obomba.
The strongest force is the force that walks the other Way.
To peace,

--

Very well, let's talk about how drones are being used "in the real world" in the current wars. The UN has not authorized US military action anywhere. The Congress has not declared war. They are not wars of self-defense. So the wars against al Qaeda, ISIS, and whoever else the president thinks is an enemy are illegal. Therefore, any killings of anybody by US drones in the Middle East or anywhere else are murders. Debates about whether drones are morally preferable to bombings are irrelevant in the current circumstances (sure, they are morally preferable to using nuclear weapons or carpet bombing; so what?). The President of the United States, therefore, has committed the ultimate international crime, aggression, the same crime for which Nazis were convicted. Unless you think the President is above the law, as Nixon decreed, you cannot avoid the conclusion that Barack Obama, the President of Drone Warfare, is a serial killer.
Of course, this is unthinkable and unsayable in polite company and in the mainstream media. As philosophers, however, we can think it, we can say it, and we are right.

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Regrettably, nothing followed. Since 2015, almost a decade later, no more attention was given to AI warfare on Philosophy Talk.

Philosophy Talk a decade later...
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