Human emotions protect civilians by restraining lethal military force

Evidence

This is one of the worries of the authors of a recent report: “By eliminating human involvement in the decision to use lethal force in armed conflict, fully autonomous weapons would undermine other, non-legal protections for civilians. First, robots would not be restrained by human emotions and the capacity for compassion… . Emotionless robots could, therefore, serve as tools of repressive dictators seeking to crack down on their own people without fear their troops would turn on them… . Emotions do not always lead to irrational killing.” — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 1135

Categorization

• XREF: Contradicts the standard military ethos that emotion undermines discipline; connects to arguments that drones remove restraint — connects to: Empathy discourse is repurposed to legitimize mechanized killing; An enemy’s incidental human detail can stop a soldier from firing; Intimate relationships can challenge the military’s monopoly on soldiers’ loyalty (+6 more)

Related

• An enemy’s incidental human detail can stop a soldier from firing (similarity 0.90)
• Empathy discourse is repurposed to legitimize mechanized killing (similarity 0.87)
• The drone state aims to replace mobilized citizen bodies with mechanical agents. (similarity 0.80)
• Feigned empathy with victims legitimizes drone homicide publicly (similarity 0.79)
• Roboticist Ronald Arkin argues lethal robots could be more humane than human soldiers (similarity 0.79)
• Ethical-robot advocacy lowers moral barriers to deploying lethal robots. (similarity 0.79)
• Combat indifference to killing spread to accept civilian deaths by mistake (similarity 0.79)
• Hyperprotecting soldiers shifts the burden of risk onto civilians (similarity 0.78)