Daniel Suarez: The kill decision shouldn't belong to a robot

TED · 78K views · 2013-06-13 · 13:21

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Overview

Novelist Daniel Suarez warns in a TED talk about autonomous robotic weapons and drones. He argues that taking the decision to kill out of human hands threatens democratic accountability and calls for a ban.

On Hacker News

Plugged repeatedly in AI and drone threads as a concise statement of the dangers of automated weapons.

Recommended by 3 HN people across 3 months · HN mentions 2013–2025

Topics

AI safety, AGI & impact Robotics Military history & warfare

What people said

jameslk · 2025-08 · Strong recommendation
There's likely a slippery slope fallacy in there somewhere (I hope). If interested in the (not so) sci-fi aspects of automated weapons and their ramifications, I often plug Daniel Suarez's great Kill Decision talk and book: [VIDEO]
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higherpurpose · 2014-10 · Recommendation
When you see governments already contemplating killing people based on algorithms, you begin to empathize with Musk about calling AI a "demon" that we're summoning: [LINK] However right now I'm much more afraid of governments "setting loose" autonomous killer robots than I am about Skynet-like self-conscious killer robots (which may be what Musk is thinking about). To the people being on the receiving end of the autonomous killer robots' missiles, it won't be much difference, though. They would already be living a "Terminator-like" future, where they have to "fight the machines". Relevant talk by Daniel Suarez: [VIDEO]
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salient · 2013-12 · Recommendation
This is only going to get worse if they make drones autonomous, which this TED talk shows they have a lot of reasons for why they will want to make them autonomous, unless there's huge public outcry demanding a ban: [VIDEO]
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Sources

Video by TED, played through YouTube.

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