The Next Big Weapon

In my opinion I do believe that AI weapons violate the Martens Clause because according to the text, these "autonomous weapons systems select and engage targets without human intervention..."(Russel 415). In other words, these weapons can work on their own with no human/s needed. The Martens Clause bans weapons that violate "principles of humanity and dictates of public conscience"(415). in other words, AI weapons are taking on roles that humans are able to do on their own an the Martens Clause practically believes that it should stay that way with no interference of robots. Many countries, such as Germany for instance, "will not accept that the decision over life and death is taken solely by an autonomous system". In a way, this violates the human right to live. This autonomous system will have the say in who lives and who dies. This machine will have too much of its own power.

I describe meaningful human control over AI weapons as a human stepping in when the weapon begins to get out of control and abuse its power. From this article that is how it seems. I feel that it needs to always be controlled, before it controls us. The article states, "LAWS could violate fundamental principles of human dignity... they might be tasked to eliminate anyone exhibiting 'threatening behaviour'". How does the weapon know when someone is actually in the action of threatening someone or if one is simply joking around with a friend? Yes, they can be tasked to do these things but how do they actually know when it's serious or not? This weapon needs all the human control as possible because it still does not know right from wrong.

The scope of the conversations was social media and how it could help scientists and researchers spread the word that robots were good and can actually help out in the future. The biggest hurdle was that "many researchers have never tweeted, blogged or made a YouTube video" and "it can take years to build a social media following that make the effort worthwhile"(Hauert 417).

"Clustering analyses can define new syndromes-- separating diseases that were thought to be the same and unifying others that have the same underlying defects"(Altman 417). This easily impacts the medical fields. These machines will be able to diagnose and treat patients and even come up with treatment and cures. All of these tasks in which a medical professional can do will be handed over to robots. Yes, this will help in the future but every day our medical professionals learn new things, although sometimes it may take years. Whereas robots just seem to know everything without training. what helps patients these days are feelings. A robot cannot help a human when being diagnosed. They will not know what to say to them. In other words, a doctor can say to someone "we can hope for the best" when dealing with someone who is losing a battle to a disease. When a robot may bluntly say  "you will die in two days" or they may not say anything at all. There will be no comfort.

These articles reminded me of the Disney film Smart House. The house did everything on its own. Cooked, Cleaned, etc. Until one day it just wants to control the family that lives in the house. This film goes to show that everything that glitters is not gold. Artificial Intelligence is a great thing and may possible do great things in the future. I do believe that everyone has that small piece of fear in the back of their head knowing that it can all go wrong. Without the right control, robots can and will be able to take over the world.