Thomas’s Comments (group member since Dec 31, 2016)

Thomas’s comments from the The Bookshelf group.

Thanks August! For the rest of the crowd, I'd like to welcome one of the authors of Ghost Fleet, August Cole, to this discussion. We are truly fortunate to have such a direct connection to the author so, on behalf of everyone, I'd like to thank August for engaging as part of the follow up to DEFx.

August has also agreed to take part in a broader online discussion on either 27 / 28 Feb. We'll be advertising this a little broader than this group, but I hope you'll all put it in your diaries now. Wait out for more details.

Hey Guys. For my two cents, I think two things stood out in the way the plot of Ghost Fleet was constructed.

The first is that, although drone use was prevalent, the sense was still that it was centred on 'automated' and not 'autonomous' systems. The man remained firmly in the loop, and it seems the authors didn't want to grapple with the ethical issues of truly autonomous decision making. Did anyone else get that sense? If so, why do you think they chose to keep it so?

The second is that the issue of the use of nuclear weapons was firmly placed to one side. Bar some minor chat, it never came up. Mick Cook talked about a couple of Deus Ex Machina moments, and I was half expecting the dropping of a tac nuke on the Chinese Fleet at the end (which turned out to be a drone swarming vignette). Again, I think the authors purposely parked the nuclear issue as, much like in Cold War game theory, the story would have had to have ended in escalation. In some ways thus is a shame; the development of tac nukes that change the threshold for use against a non nuclear nation is likely to be a trend of the 21st C.

Any thoughts? Or am I barking firmly up the wrong cyber-tree?

Tom

Just listening to the Ghost Fleet air battle with the swarmed autonomous aircraft and the F-15s. For those interested, might be worth reading this summary / analysis of AI from Chatham House:

https://www.chathamhouse.org/publicat...

Looking forward to it ...