LEVEL 1 - 62 OF 65 STORIES
Copyright 1985 McGraw-Hill, Inc.
Byte

January, 1985

SECTION: EDITORIAL; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1011 words

HEADLINE: AUTONOMOUS WEAPONS AND HUMAN RESPONSIBILITY

BYLINE: Phil Lemmons, Editor in Chief

BODY:
	The human desire to avoid responsibility for difficult decisions probably goes back to the 
dawn of time.  In their brief period on this earth, computers have taken the blame for millions of 
human mistakes.  Who hasn't heard a computer blamed for an error in billing or delivery?  One 
typical case of blaming the computer occurred in a school system in which a computer handled 
scheduling of classes.  On the first day of school, the most vocal complaints came from students 
whose lunch hours had been assigned at 8:30, 9:30, 10:30, 2:30, and 3:30.  That's right -- 
someone had forgotten to instruct the computer that lunch has to occur in the middle of the day.  
The school's new computer took the blame.  Those who knew little about computers hated them 
more over this incident.  Those in positions of authority found a versatile new scapegoat.

	Anecdotes like this are amusing when little hangs in the balance.  In the presidential debates 
in the fall, however, one of the candidates suggested that military decisions affecting the fate of the 
earth might be irrevocably delegated to computers if the other candidate's programs were enacted.  
The candidate making that claim either understood nothing of computers or else he was acting as a 
demagogue, casting himself as the hero to save the earth from the tyranny of computers.  In either 
case, the candidate did his country a disservice.

	Computers, of course, do as people tell them.  The hard part is for people to foresee all 
circumstances and write instructions to handle all circumstances optimally.  Lack of foresight and 
poor planning occur in many fields with or without computers.  But computers make wonderful 
scapegoats.  When foresight and planning fail, computers take the blame.  Consequently their 
image as cold, dehumanizing villains is perpetuated.  Some fictional and cinematic depictions of 
computers also endow them with a villainy that exceeds the capabilities of digital electronics.
   
	To be sure, computers are cold and indifferent.  But let's consider a few cases in which the 
inhuman properties of computers enable them to help people. Computer conferencing enables 
people to exchange text messages with others who share their interests.  One advantage of 
computer conferencing is clear: people needn't be in the same place at the same time in order to 
exchange comments. But computer conferencing also prevents loud and aggressive people from 
dominating a group as they can in face-to-face conversation.  As Starre Roxanne Hiltz and Murray 
Turoff point out in their book The Network Nation: Human Communication via Computer 
(Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley, 1978), ". . . persons who happen to be fast on the draw' in a 
face-to-face verbal situation, and who may not be particularly intelligent or correct, tend to 
dominate the discussion and decision-making process in small groups." In computer conferencing, 
"one participant making a statement in no way interferes with the ability of another person to be 
making a statement that overlaps in time." Computer conferencing for the BYTE staff has led to 
much better discussions with much broader and more balanced participation than occurs in face-to-
face staff meetings.  In fact, it has been a joy to see some shy people blossom in our computer-
mediated meetings.Who would have supposed computers would emancipate the shy?

	Some of the benefits that computers can bestow on humans are more obvious. In giving 
instructions to slow learners, computers persist when even the most saintly human instructors 
would lose patience.  In providing simulations of difficult or dangerous situations, computers 
reduce the risks borne by people who must sometimes face the real hazards.  If we use our 
electronic resources reasonably, bomb disposal will soon become the exclusive domain of robots.  
We can make computers serve human needs.

	People who understand computers understand how these machines can serve people.  But 
some people who understand computers well are letting us fall victim once again to the myth of 
computers as villains.  The phrase that magically shifts blame from humans to computers is 
"autonomous weapons." The issue skirted is the same one dealt with so poorly in the presidential 
debates.  We can build unmanned tanks that detect certain kinds of objects and then
destroy them.  We can build and program computers to monitor motion and radiation and, upon 
detection of patterns that we have specified, to hurl devastation on targets that we have chosen.  
But using the phrase "autonomous weapons" confers on such devices a higher status than that of 
the glorified booby traps that they are.  A concealed pit of sharpened stakes is just as autonomous a 
weapon as an  unmanned tank. A terrorist's time bomb is just as autonomous a weapon as an 
orbital launching pad or beam weapon.  But we have no doubt that the man who digs the pit and 
sharpens the stakes bears responsibility for killing the man who falls in, or that the man who builds 
and plants the time bomb murders its victims, even if the victims are not those intended.
  
	Humans will build the coming generation of "autonomous" weapons.  Humans will 
program them, and humans will either make, delegate, or blunder all decisions about their control.  
Humans will bear all the responsibility for the good or ill these weapons do.

	This is not the place to argue the merits of such weapons or the likelihood of events that 
might justify the manufacture, deployment, or use of such weapons.  But as one of the world's 
most widely read computer magazines, BYTE is the place to say that computers should never be 
the scapegoats for difficult human decisions affecting the fate of the earth.  Computers follow 
sequences of human instructions.  People decide.  If we forget this, we may someday find 
ourselves speechless when we hear a leader explain a missing continent by saying, "The 
autonomous weapon was in a loop."

	We must insist that individuals who decide to deploy autonomous weapons bear 
responsibility for everything these weapons do.