Lane von Herzen: Do Autonomous Drones Pose a Fundamental Threat to Democracy? -- Update

My Third Novel's Conclusion, My Heartbreak

My heart begins to break when I think about completing this particular book -- because this narrative has sustained me like no other story I've known. It's both more personal and more universal than my other works. But beyond memory and archetype, it's a cri-de-coeur about needing to become the person one is destined to be. And in the writing, I have met my own life's work, my own fated journey -- having the sense all the while that the pages are suffused with a resonance, an energy, an electrified field that defies explanation. Writers hope and pray to be overtaken by a work in this way -- to be conscripted into passionate service of a profound story. To experience it even once in a lifetime seems a great privilege. I still have several months before this novel is complete, and this constitutes my reprieve. Because I'm not ready for the beauty to end.

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Do Autonomous Drones Pose a Fundamental Threat to Democracy? -- Update

Update: The answer to question #17 has been expanded.

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1. When you think about AI manifesting in myriad areas of human civilization, what applications concern you the most?

Answer: At this particular time? AI development in drone warfare.

2. Why?

Answer: When we no longer have individual human pilots who are responsible for drone deployments and assaults, we will have created an existential threat to humanity.

3. Can't autonomous drones be programed to implement the same battle criteria as human drone pilots?

Answer: Again, we need to pause at the threshold of disconnecting the human conscience from offensive assaults which take human life.

Human drone pilots have the capacity to serve as whistleblowers regarding unjustified drone deployments, and some of them have.

The New York Times has written some important articles concerning the notion of "moral injury" sustained by drone pilots, relating to their experience of guilt over unjustified assaults.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/15/us/drones-airstrikes-ptsd.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/05/09/podcasts/the-daily/drones-airstrikes-military-ptsd.html

Autonomous drones, lacking the conscience, the empathy, the compassion, the moral framework, the soul that renders us human -- are simply never going to object when tasked in ways that violate domestic and international rules of conduct.

4. Is there a role for autonomous drones?

Answer: I believe there is, but I would assert that that role should be focused on defensive capabilities that target attack drones only. Civilian populations have the right to conduct their lives without fear of drone assault. To the extent that autonomous drones can keep the skies clear of all offensive drone deployments, autonomous drones may have an important defensive role to play.

5. You do not support offensive capabilities in autonomous drone development.

Answer: No one who truly understands this civilizational threshold would support offensive capabilities in autonomous drone development.

Decisions that end human life must never become disconnected from real people who are responsible for those choices.

6. When you consider the potential for two opposing forces of autonomous offensive drones, what do you think the public should understand?

Answer: Autonomous offensive drones represent an impending threat to the freedom of mankind.

If we value free speech, freedom of assembly, the right to privacy, freedom of the press -- we need to object to their development and deployment on an immediate basis.

7. Why do you say we need to object on an immediate basis?

Answer: The New York Times reported on August 28, 2023 that the Pentagon plans to buy thousands of unmanned drones and other autonomous devices within the next two years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/28/us/politics/pentagon-drones-china.html

8. How do you respond to the assertion that other nations have been making substantial investments in autonomous warfare capabilities?

Answer: Our wisest approach is to invest in ways to defend against autonomous AI military drone and device deployments toward civilian populations.

9. Why is this your assessment?

Answer: Autonomous offensive drone and device capabilities, on two opposing sides, represent an existential threat for human civilization.

This type of AI system will be programed to "win," not to preserve human life or the environment.

A "war games" scenario of this kind will rapidly escalate beyond acceptable humanitarian and environmental bounds.

10. What would happen to whistleblowers in a future defined by autonomous military drones?

Answer: Whistleblowers would quickly vanish from view. Free speech would be forfeit. All dissent would be disallowed. Totalitarianism would have arrived, and it would have arrived with a technology that societies may be incapable of de-escalating.

11. You are assuming that drones would be domestically deployed.

Answer: My husband and I are law-abiding American citizens, yet we have had drones deployed above our residence for at least the last two years.

12. Because of your whistleblower stance?

Answer: There is no other reason.

13. So your point is that drones are already being domestically deployed against U.S. citizens.

Answer: That is my point exactly.

14. Do you think the drones deployed to your residence may have had assault capabilities?

Answer: I think the drones deployed to my residence have had human supervision at some point in the chain of command.

But I also think it is likely that military capabilities have progressed beyond the DoD's public announcements.

Google signed a contract with the Pentagon to develop AI for drone applications in 2021, so readers can extrapolate from there.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/15/technology/google-ai-pentagon.html

15. You have been specifically threatened with drone assault.

Answer: Many times.

16. Have those threats had an impact on your quality of life?

Answer: Of course.

17. If AI-driven autonomous drone capabilities already exist and are already in deployment, what regulatory possibilities are left to us?

Answer: Policy and law-making, driven by the public's demand for a peaceable future.

It must be stated that the Biden administration has taken critical steps to prevent the targeting of civilian populations with drone strikes overseas. This is yet another reason that I stand in admiration of President Biden as our Commander in Chief. He is fully engaged with this issue. He understands this as a defining moment for democracy in both a domestic and international context.

18. Yet the public may need to be informed about what is at stake for all of us at this historic moment.

Answer: Yes, this threshold must be illuminated so that the public can see it clearly.

19. And what is at stake for us?

Answer: The sovereignty of the individual. The right of electorates to self-govern. The humanitarian progress of civilization. The life of democracies the world over. The freedom of mankind.