In a Robot War, Kill the Humans
Even if advances in robotics mean fewer humans on the battlefield, the fight will increasingly focus on those that remain.
By Zak Kallenborn
August 27, 2020
Last week’s lopsided showdown between a human F-16 pilot and an artificially intelligent one — the robot won 5-0 — was just the latest sign that we need to be thinking harder about the changes that smart machines are bringing to the battlefield. Among them: as relatively cheap robots play larger roles, the focus of warfare will shift to attacking and defending the humans that operate, maintain, and even build them.
Now and for the foreseeable future, military robots still need humans. Robots are not (yet) capable of the complex thinking required for warfare; advances in speed and computational power do not automatically bring basic common sense. A robot cannot tell the difference between a farmer with a gun and a soldier.
So the military frequently focuses on the concept of human-machine teaming: the machine does what it does best, and the humans do the rest.
https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2020/08/robot-war-kill-humans/168038/
