there is not a chance in hell that 1.5 million people would voluntarily build a robot army for a tyrant
There are so many ways that a tyrant could end up with a robot army. Don't let's pretend that that's the only way. Here are a few:
A country is in turmoil and a leader comes along who makes people feel hope. The people are open to "lesser evil" propositions and risk-taking because they are desperate. They make irrational decisions and empower the wrong person. Hitler is a real life actual example of this happening.
A leader who is thought of as "good" builds a killer robot army. Then, realizing that they have total power over their people corrupts them and they behave like a tyrant, effectively turning into an oppressive dictator.
Hypothetical scenario: The setting is a country with presidential elections (I choose America for this one). Hypothetically, in this scenario we'll say the technology to do this was completely ready to be exploited. So the government begins to build a killer robot army. Hypothetically, a good president happens to be in office, so people think it's okay. We'll say that president gets a second term. Eight years pass, and a significant killer robot army is created. It's powerful enough to kill every American. Now, it's time to change the president. Maybe the American people choose somebody with their best interests in mind. Maybe they choose a wolf in sheep's clothing, or a moron who doesn't understand the dangers. It's not like we haven't elected morons before and it isn't as if entire countries full of people have never empowered anyone dangerous. I think it's reasonable to say that there's at least a 5% chance that each election will yield either a fatally moronic person, an otherwise good person who is susceptible to being seriously corrupted if given too much power, someone with a tyrant's values/personality, or a sociopath. If you're thinking to yourself "how many times in American history have we seen a president go corrupt by power" consider that there have been checks and balances in place to prevent them from having enough power to be corrupted by. In my opinion, it's likely that most of them would be corrupted by the kind of absolute power that a killer robot army would give them, and 5% is actually quite a low estimate compared with my model of how reality works. But for hypothetical purposes, we'll pretend it's only as high as 5%. We roll the dice on that 5% chance every four years because we hold elections again. If we added those 5% chances up over the course of the rest of my life, we'd end up with it being more likely than not (62.5%) that the wrong person will end up having total control over the country I live in.
Do you see now how a tyrant or other undesirable leader could very conceivably end up heading a killer robot army?
[1]: 1/200 US population average microsoft salary = 150 billion USD. This would require many, many years of work- given how long the military has worked on predators, probably decades. So it would require trillions of dollars.
Thank you. I am very glad for these figures. How long do you think it would take for the US government to build 100 million killer robots?
Also, I don't think you understand sociopathy. The 1/20 figure you cited should be 1/25, which refers to the DSM's "antisocial personality disorder;"
Not sure why we have different numbers but: The statistics for America are different from the statistics for other countries (so, depending on whether your source is aiming for a global figure or local figure, this can vary), the statistic probably changes over time, the DSM changes over time, there are multiple sources on this that probably do not agree, and the 1/20 figure is based on research I did ten years ago, so something in there probably explains it. A 1% difference in prevalence is irrelevant here since (in my extremely amateurish, shoot-from-the-hip estimate "just to get some perspective") if 1 in 200 people are willing to work on the robot army, that's enough -- and 1/25 is obviously significantly larger.
sociopathy is a deficit in moral reasoning, which is very different from being a person who's just waiting to become a minion to some dictator.
Ah, but if you want to be a tyrant you don't need minions who have been dreaming of becoming a minion. Consider this - most people who are employed at a job didn't dream of becoming what they are. There are a lot of people working as cashiers, grocery baggers, doing boring work in a factory, working in telemarketing, etc who dislike and even despise their jobs. Why do they do them? Money, obviously.
Why don't those people turn into drug dealers? They'd make more money that way.
Ethics!
Those people have a sense of right and wrong, or at least are successfully coerced by laws.
People with antisocial personality disorder, the way the DSM defines it, have neither of these properties.
You said yourself above that most people wouldn't want to build a robot army for a tyrant. I agree. But a sociopath doesn't give a rat's behind how they get their money. That is why they are more likely to work for a tyrant - they don't have a conscience and they don't care about the law. If they can make more money assembling killer robots than flipping burgers, there's nothing to stop them from taking the killer robot job.
Taking this into consideration, do you think sociopaths could end up building killer robots?
It seems to me like you're outlining four different scenarios:
1) The United States, or another major power, converts from manned to unmanned weapons of war. A military coup is impossible today because soldiers won't be willing to launch one; were soldiers to be replaced by robots, they could be ordered to.
2) Another state develops unmanned weapons systems which enable it to defeat the United States.
3) A private individual develops unmanned weapons systems which enable them to defeat the United States.
4) Another state which is already a dictatorship develop...
A new TED talk video just came out by Daniel Suarez, author of Daemon, explaining how autonomous combat drones with a capability called "lethal autonomy" pose a threat to democracy. Lethal autonomy is what it sounds like - the ability of a robot to kill a human without requiring a human to make the decision.
He explains that a human decision-maker is not a necessity for combat drones to function. This has potentially catastrophic consequences, as it would allow a small number of people to concentrate a very large amount of power, ruining the checks and balances of power between governments and their people and the checks and balances of power between different branches of government. According to Suarez, about 70 countries have begun developing remotely piloted drones (like predator drones), the precursor to killer robots with lethal autonomy.
Daniel Suarez: The kill decision shouldn't belong to a robot
One thing he didn't mention in this video is that there's a difference in obedience levels between human soldiers and combat drones. Drones are completely obedient but humans can throw a revolt. Because they can rebel, human soldiers provide some obstacles to limit the power that would-be tyrants could otherwise obtain. Drones won't provide this type of protection whatsoever. Obviously, relying on human decision making is not perfect. Someone like Hitler can manage to convince people to make poor ethical choices - but still, they need to be convinced, and that requirement may play a major role in protecting us. Consider this - it's unthinkable that today's American soldiers might suddenly decide this evening to follow a tyrannical leader whose goal is to have total power and murder all who oppose. It is not, however, unthinkable at all that the same tyrant, if empowered by an army of combat drones, could successfully launch such an attack without risking a mutiny. The amount and variety of power grabs a tyrant with a robot army of sufficient power can get away with is unlimited.
Something else he didn't mention is that because we can optimize technologies more easily than we can optimize humans, it may be possible to produce killer robots in less time than it takes to build armies of human soldiers and with less expense than training and paying those soldiers. Considering the salaries and benefits paid to soldiers and the 18 year wait time on human development, it is possible that an overwhelmingly large army of killer robots could be built more quickly than human armies and with fewer resources.
Suarez's solution is to push for legislation that makes producing robots with lethal autonomy illegal. There are, obviously, pros and cons to this method. Another method (explored in Daemon) is that if the people have 3-D printers, then the people may be able to produce comparable weapons which will then check and balance their government's power. This method has pros and cons as well. I came up with a third method which is here. I think it's better than the alternatives but I would like more feedback.
As far as I know, no organization, not even MIRI (I checked), is dedicated to preventing the potential political disasters caused by near-term tool AI (MIRI is interested in the existential risks posed by AGI). That means it's up to us - the people - to develop our understanding of this subject and spread the word to others. Of all the forums on the internet, LessWrong is one of the most knowledgeable when it comes to artificial intelligence, so it's a logical place to fire up a discussion on this. I searched LessWrong for terms like "checks and balances" and "Daemon" and I just don't see evidence that we've done a group discussion on this issue. I'm starting by proposing and exploring some possible solutions to this problem and some pros and cons of each.
To keep things organized, let's put each potential solution, pro and con into a separate comment.