STANKULI@cs.umass.EDU.UUCP (03/27/87)
perhaps i am stepping out of my league here, but i feel that Ken Laws and
AILIST should be encouraged to circulate information about all AI-related
applications, especially whatever military issues can be circulated among
us.
tactics is the use of force (a semantics on a fundamental physical
property), and the evolutionary development of it has been an ongoing
process which has been around as long as there has been animal life on this
planet. strategy is a metalanguage on tactics; and, according to clausewitz
(1832, On War), policy is a metalanguage on strategy. human lives have been
lost or saved through the application of these principles. to think that an
artificial intelligence can avoid or ignore the fact that force can break
structure is naive. hide-your-head-in-the-sand moralities which seek to
deny the validity of tactics almost always begin with the preamble "IF
nobody used force..."
democratic societies are directly based on the ability of the populace to
make informed decisions on policy. censorship (the selective hiding of
information) is an inheirent evil in a society which tries distribute
political power across the widest possible base. i believe that atomic
weapons have been so judiciously unused because of the widespread knowledge
of their lethality. the only tactical use of them took place when their
existence was security classified and controlled by a few people.
if AI has the power we believe it does, then the safest use is that which
circulates the information to the widest possible audience-- especially to
those who have do-not-use viewpoints. rather than trying to embarass our
military sponsers when they do share with us insights into tactical AI uses,
we should encourage such rare openness. the danger lies in power that can
exist which is kept secret.
if AI does not have the power we believe it does, then little is lost in
the publication of plausible fiction, and we all gain by the integrity of an
open knowledge base.
stan
[EOF] AI-Military.Mai
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