The Ethics of Biologically Enhancing Soldiers

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/more-than-human-the-ethics-of-biologically-enhancing-soldiers/253217/

by digisth • 14 years ago

33 34 14 years ago

theatlantic.com

alexvay• 14 years ago

Why such an article on such a topic start with torture is beyond me. The question we should be asking, I think, is when (the "how" is no longer relevant now is it) we start engineering humans, how we avoid the situation that has been "documented" in every post-apocalyptic sci-fi where a superior species arrives (or created) and wipes out the weaker, non-engineered humans?

I am far less concerned with philosophical question, such as whether a person engineering to be the smartest would be smart on his own right; would a person engineered to be the strongest & fastest be a successful athlete in his own right, or is it simply an unfair inter-species competition which is no different than pitting a disabled person vs. a healthy one; etc.

Lockyy• 14 years ago

Was this issue with atheletes not debated recently in the London Olympics with the man who had a blade replacement for a leg who was allowed to compete with non-augmented athletes?

I don't want to get into whether I think letting him compete against regular athletes was a good idea or not for that specific event. However I think there needs to be care because where is the line drawn? How advanced do his blades need to become before it's just not fair any longer?

DanBC2• 14 years ago

> the man who had a blade replacement for a leg

Oscar Pistorius. He's a multiple gold medal winning Olympic athlete. He has two blades. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Pistorius)

politician• 14 years ago

Given our historically poor treatment of veterans, my main concern with biological augmentations is what happens to the hosts after they leave active service.

DanielBMarkham3• 14 years ago

Telepresence, at least in terms of overall kinetic impact, is going to easily trump bioenhancements.

In other words, it's not the bio-engineered solider with the special enhancements that should concern thinkers. It's the remotely-controlled soldier of 2050 operated from thousands of miles away. Our bio-enhanced guy will be sitting in a Starbucks in Deluth slurping down a double-latte, not marching off to war somewhere.

As robotics takes off in 20-40 years, we're going to see a very real division between countries that can field robotic armies and countries that cannot. All the engineering the world isn't going to make a human emit less infrared radiation, or stop having the electrical signals that form a heartbeat. The history of warfare is just as this article indicates: a tool-using species coming up with more and more efficient ways to slaughter each other. Robotics offers the ultimate tools in this area: targeted lethality, impervious to human frailties, and an Information Age cleverness. They'll make chemical and biological weapons -- and enhanced ground pounders -- look like a day in the park.

You really don't want to be a freedom fighter in the year 2050. Or piss off a major world power.

kiba• 14 years ago

Telepresence, at least in terms of overall kinetic impact, is going to easily trump bioenhancements.

Combat AI makes much more sense, since they can react faster than a human sitting behind a computer separated by a further thousand miles away. The latency will add up, and reaction speed is going to be a decisive factors between combat robots. Telepresence might makes much more sense if you can decide on a slower time frame such as strategic or tactical decisions but those will be increasingly be made by the AIs or the humans near them.

DanielBMarkham3• 14 years ago

Agreed. I generalized, but you are entirely correct.

You can't beat the speed of light, or the time it takes nerve impulses to fire Especially once we see armed robots facing other robots, the people will quickly be shuffled out of the mix.

Having said that, my bet is that telepresence still rules to some degree. What you'll see is more strategic control. Just like with HFT, the tactical stuff will simply happen too quickly for meat bags.

It'll be interesting if we start seeing a "war of missiles" for land forces like we've seen play out in the skies. Ground-to-ground anti-robotic ordinance shouldn't be too difficult to produce. It would have a much different signature than other forms of ordinance. If the pattern holds, this would lead to stealth robots, which would be a very interesting development. Hoards of invisible, lethal, ground-based intelligent robots is a pretty freaking scary scenario.

zackelan• 14 years ago

Right now, most drones are fighting non-robotic targets, and doing it with an emphasis on stealth (for example, flying so high that forces on the ground can't see or hear them). This makes latency less of a factor, since the human operators can take their time in selecting targets, and are fairly confident that they won't face any sudden attacks.

As drone-on-drone combat becomes more common, you're definitely correct that more decisions will be made by the drones, without human intervention. I can imagine drones having a bedrock set of commands that don't require human approval (such as, "if another aircraft is shooting at you, drop what you're doing and shoot back"). Humans would still provide overall goals, such as "blow up that bunker", but the drones will have increasing autonomy in how that is carried out.

There's an interesting parallel to the Mars rovers here, precisely because of the massive latency, even though Mars isn't an actively hostile environment. I don't recall the source, but I remember reading about Curiosity having much more autonomy than previous versions. It's given the same bedrock set of commands ("don't drive off cliffs", "don't smash into large rocks", etc), and human operators give it a similar set of high-level goals ("drive towards that weird outcropping over there"). This lets it explore much more efficiently than driving a few feet, waiting on an Mars-Earth-Mars round-trip for instructions, and so on.

protomyth2• 14 years ago

"they can react faster than a human sitting behind a computer separated by a further thousand miles away"

Maybe. The problem is identifying friend and foes. An AI might need more time than an actual person. Beyond that, losing a robot is not a big deal compared to losing a person, so the mistakes made in the field (ex. killing an innocent person who happened to get in the way) can be lessened because the fear of death is no longer there for the soldier.

tlb3• 14 years ago

The point of war these days isn't to kill the enemy, but to convince them to surrender and join your side. Faster combat reactions might kill enemy soldiers faster, but if that were the goal you would just drop bombs on them.

You get people to surrender by being reasonable and helpful until they shoot at you, and then fighting back fairly following the rules of war. You have to make being a soldier in your army seem like a better life than being a soldier in their army. Telepresence and combat AI have some value, but will not achieve the main goals.

tomjen32• 14 years ago

Please. All the engineering in the world may not may a human stop having a heatbeat -- but you are overlooking two factors that you really shouldn't in this day and age:

1) It doesn't matter if your target has a heartbeat when the seven civilians loitering in the area also have heartbeats (and you don't know which one it is) or when your targets heartbeat stops because he just blew himself up in the middle of a market square, and you didn't even knew there were enemies around. Or when your soldiers die because they accidentally kicked over a piece of trash that was wired up to blow an old soviet grenade.

The attitude that all we need is much better equipment is the same attitude the current leadership of the pentagon has -- but it couldn't be further from the truth, because compared with the weapons the iraq fighters and the Taliban currently have, our weapons are already much better.

What we really need is much better intelligence.

DanielBMarkham3• 14 years ago

I don't disagree, but I think you're having some other conversation about eyeballs on the ground versus more and more expensive weapon systems. As a former marine, this is an argument in which I'm very much inclined to agree with you. God knows we don't need many more B-2 bombers to fight the Taliban.

Having said that, the point here is that massive, inexpensive, intelligent, and mobile systems will work alongside troops on the ground more and more as warfighting evolves. This will happen much the same as the dog, horse, or mule worked alongside fighters, only the robotic versions will continue to increase in functionality.

But in the end that's a process discussion -- how will things advance over time. My point was that just like in all other fields, our helpers will soon become our betters. Won't happen for decades yet, but you can be sure it's coming sooner or later. And at that point, just like every other human endeavor, some pimply-faced kid in a Starbucks can control just as much firepower as a four-star general. It will just be a matter of credentials and security.

lostlogin2• 14 years ago

Sort of agree. Improving the quality of soldiers is about the worst way to go about making the world a better place. It's like the ambulance and the bottom of the cliff, but worse.

ovi256• 14 years ago

Well, Dick Cheney, along with a large number of other people, does not have a heartbeat anymore. He was implanted a continuous pump.

tlb3• 14 years ago

I'm not sure telepresence is sufficient to win a war. People generally agree that when you have a human soldier standing on every street corner, you've won. I think a telepresence robot on every street corner would not have the same effect.

One reason is that even in war, most people are reluctant to kill enemy soldiers. But few would have much trouble sabotaging robots. So telepresence robots won't cause the civilian population to accept the new regime.

Despite some effort, I have not managed to cause people to form the sort of bond with a telepresence robot that naturally forms with people thrown together.

jakeonthemove• 14 years ago

I think regime changes will be done from the inside more often than not in the future - it's been proven to be more effective (and cheaper) than sending thousands of soldiers and machinery to foreign lands...

Meanwhile, telepresent groups of drones and semi-autonomous turrets would be used to fight any localized resistance and protect important objects.

I think (and hope) we won't see any major conflicts like WW1 and WW2 in the future, since there's really no good reason for one (even Europe finally gets it, hence the EU), unless it's an alien invasion...

jzwinck• 14 years ago

If the occupied society is too willing to destroy the guard robots, but would not hurt humans, why not give them both? Post a sign on each bot: "WARNING: if this guard is tampered with, its controlling human will be subject to electroshock." Or wire it up so if one bot is damaged it commands a nearby one to retaliate, either against the original aggressor or a random target.

rndmize• 14 years ago

I have a hard time seeing this. If one side can field robotic armies, what stops the other (poorer) side from deploying massive jammers (or lots of small ones)?

> You really don't want to be a freedom fighter in the year 2050. Or piss off a major world power.

You would think that would be the case today, with all our computers, fleets of carriers and aircraft, intelligence and satellites... and here we were having trouble with IEDs and roadside bombs in Iraq.

tokenadult• 14 years ago

Today's submission,

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/more-t...

is an older article (February 2012) from the same author as

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/01/could-...

(4 January 2013), submitted to HN

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5010370

with a confusing altered title.

jamesaguilar• 14 years ago

You know the thing about majoring on the minors? Don't get me wrong, I'm all for intellectual pondering of almost any question, but let's not forget that before dealing with the ethics of enhancing soldiers, we might also need to consider the ethics of using them at all.

gnosis• 14 years ago

Yes. I see war as just about the ultimate unethical human activity.

The (non)ethics of enhancing soldiers and using robots pale in comparison to the (non)ethics of participating in warfare and weapon design and manufacture in the first place.

jpxxx• 14 years ago

Yes, these are fascinating new ethical questions.

watching legions of homeless, mentally ill vets mill on the street below

johnnyg• 14 years ago

From where I sit, those "primitive" IEDs seem to be giving America and allies all we can handle in Iraq and Afganistan...

I get that technology is changing the world, and that drones HAVE changed the battle field already, but on balance it seems well known that one day we'll walk out of both of those countries either having lost or fought to a draw - how ever you want to spin it.

I don't see how an action shot of a solider leaping with metal assisted legs, never sleeping and eating grass will change that.

PeterisP• 14 years ago

Ethics is a luxury for limited wars where you can't fundamentally lose anyway - where if you start losing, you can pack up and go home like in Vietnam, and BAM - no more deaths for you.

However, if a total loss (say, genocide of your people) is a possibility (as in parts of WW2 or the cold war mutually assured destruction) then the ends may justify the means. Quite a lot of means.

evincarofautumn• 14 years ago

“our absurd frailty”

This framing devalues much of the content of the article. We are not frail.

ISL• 14 years ago

This Nature Future immediately came to mind:

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v491/n7424/full/491488a...

greggman• 14 years ago

Forcing modifications on a soldier is arguably ethically questionable but if these types of enhancements turn out to be safe enough (for some level of safe) then I and many others will voluntarily enhance ourselves.

I would like the gene that let's me eat without getting fat. I don't want to eat more. I just want to enjoy food.

Needing less sleep sounds awesome. I enjoy sleep but I could mostly skip the unconscious part. Would like to keep the dreams though honestly I hardly have any.

Stronger or more alert sound like awesome enhancements.

Telepathy is already here. It's called a cell phone with wireless headset.

The Ethics of Biologically Enhancing Soldiers

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