Battlefield Robotics are risk to the world (Kuenning, RISKS-23.59)

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:


Date: 12 Nov 2004 23:01:10 -0800
From: spinoza1111 () yahoo com (Edward G. Nilges)
Subject: Re: Battlefield Robotics are risk to the world (Kuenning, 
RISKS-23.59)

No, I don't think the brass hats should read old SF. They'd curl up with
Heinlein and the next thing you know, hard service in Iraq would be a
prerequisite for citizenship. They'd read the first chapter of Ursula
LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness and throw up at the very idea of 
people
changing their sex.

I'd recommend the Cambridge History of Iraq, instead, because therein 
one
reads of British redcoats, roaring about the desert in the exact same 
way as
us, in 1921, egged on by lunatics including T. E. Lawrence and Gertrude
Bell.

An analysis of what it means to be "responsible" for a software system 
is
needed, including the ways in which digital systems designers have
historically limited their liability.

It would show that no bright line can be drawn between "my 
responsibility"
and "someone else's".

A simple example from the history of ordinary software illustrates.  
When I
started coding, my boss of course had me do a lot of maintenance in 
addition
to development, and I was shocked to see that the older programmers' 
code
had all sorts of bugs causable by invalid input. I extended my own 
boundary
and that of the legacy code by adding error checks, thereby gaining a
reputation in some jobs as an ivory tower theorist, or something, 
despite
the fact that error checking is grubby praxis, and not theory.

I believe that the Bush administration wants power without 
responsibility,
and in software this has been the typical administrative/MIS gesture of
authorizing the development of crud.

In dark moments I wonder if the whole purpose of software is not 
rhetorical
and not logical, to manufacture a post-Enlightenment consent which
necessarily contains the memory of Enlightenment.

Military standards, of course, are much higher, as shown in the Ada
language. But the very precision of the process draws a bright line 
around
responsibilities which have in the past, excluded military 
responsibility
for "legacy code" in the form of land-mines and unexploded ordnance.

And as a confirmed civilian, watching Marines fire over Najulla's walls
exactly as they were filmed at the Citadel in 1968, I find it hard to
believe that they are worried about the existing laws of war, or will 
pick
up after themselves when the battle is over, if it ever is.

We may discover that one's responsibility extends so far in fact and in
ethics that the only RATIONAL response is an end to war. Gee, how about
that.

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