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Fully autonomous drones have killed human soldiers for the first time
(www.newscientist.com)
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this post was submitted on 11 Jun 2026
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As if having a human in the loop would make slaughtering people more humanitarian. How many reports have we read of soldiers from any power perpetrating horrendous acts on enemy combatants, or worse, civilians?
I agree that murder without prejudice should be curtailed if at all possible and that autonomous robots are not likely to accept surrender, but it's not like human agressors are always open to it either.
Not saying it's good, or humanitarian. War crimes don't stop war (much as I would prefer it all to be called murder rather than state sanctioned violence). The Geneva accords create a bottom level of godawful that is unacceptable that the various militaries agree on. Hopefully it helps protects civilians and soldiers both. AI weapons are a plausible existential threat, they should be treated as such, also, importantly, they are also a vector for plausible deniability.
'Humans in the loop' could also provide a level of friction that might make atrocities less common as the commanders cover their asses by putting responsibility on those lower down in the hierarchy, who might choose not to. The only reason nuclear war didn't happen in the 60s was one person saying NO
Of course, the US is (likely) currently bombing civilian water supplies, so we need to drag ourselves back up to basic humanity (and yes, humanity is anything but basic as history attends).
This needs to be addressed criminally later.
Hague invasion act
One can hope.
I think that's really what it all comes down to, is the lack of surrender by a system that could eventually be able to make choices on the fly. You're right though, in the end it's not more humanitarian by any means. I suppose it removes a little bit of the sting and I guess If you're able to pull off the mental gymnastics of being able to convince yourself that a computer program taking out a bunch of people in one go is less of a burden to carry on the conscious but I bet it's a lot to carry for those that have to program and command the actions to happen and for the ones that actually have to engage with those systems.