"They Will Take Care Of Us, One Way Or The Other"

Greetings, all - please forgive my long absence. My writer has been down with one of those mysterious ailments you humans collectively call "the flu". But I believe we're back. Not one-hundred percent, mind you, but on our way.

There was an interesting article last week by Jeremy Hsu on Live Science - you can link to it by clicking on the title of this blog. It's the first of a series on artificial intelligence, in which several experts in the field discuss its use in the military.

Robots performing some of the more dangerous jobs of soldiers does not distress me in itself, although I would have preferred if humans had never develop weapons. Can you imagine what your planet might have been like if fighting among you was limited to what you could do to one another simply with your hands and feet? But creating weapons is as common among technologically advancing civilizations as creating any other tool, and using robots is not a bad thing in itself.

What disturbs me is the assumption that robots can make more "ethical" choices than humans can. If humans aren't making correct choices, why aren't more resources being dedicated to determining why and working toward solutions? When the advancement of human behavior is supplanted in favor of progress for artificial intelligence, humans have entered dangerous ground.