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Military robots -- "autonomous systems" -- might be better than human beings with their terrible emotions.

The Telegraph reports.

Pentagon chiefs are concerned by studies of combat stress in Iraq that show high proportions of frontline troops supporting torture and retribution against enemy combatants.

Ronald Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech university, who is working on software for the US Army has written a report which concludes robots, while not "perfectly ethical in the battlefield" can "perform more ethically than human soldiers."

He says that robots "do not need to protect themselves" and "they can be designed without emotions that cloud their judgment or result in anger and frustration with ongoing battlefield events."

Isn't emotional response also needed to make sound ethical decisions? Emotion may lead us astray, but doesn't it also let us know what is right?

And shouldn't religious people object to the notion that machines can behave more ethically than human beings? You have to believe that God has no effect on people.

Full post as published by Althouse on December 01, 2008 (boomark / email).