Good evening everyone, welcome to the first post of 'Computers and the Military'. While this might seem a particularly pan-optic topic for an expert blog, the array of technology at the military's disposal is vast and perennially being updated. The use of computing software in the military is of particular interest in the context of this IntroSem because cyberspace is an abstract location to wage war, and as such is often ethically and legally ambiguous. The most heavily reported cases are obvious: the use of drones to assassinate enemy combatants and US citizens, the use of high-tech surveillance equipment and satellites to monitor virtually anybody in the world. The bottom line is that this is a gargantuan amount of unchecked power. Without further ado, my first topic:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/17/technology/17brain.html?scp=5&sq=military%20computers&st=cse
This is a NYT article about how data on the battlefield is processed and delivered to remote drone operators. However, the system is somewhat 'too' effective, and the huge quantities of information delivered to operators results in 'information overload'. The human operators are unable to isolate the most valuable information (ie whether or not a gathering of people consists of any women or children) which results in misidentified targets and civilian deaths.
What seems to be the problem here is a gap in the human-machine interface, and following on from that, a gap in responsibility. To what extent is the death of a civilian the fault of a flawed computer system vs a human's ability to interpret the data? Would it be worse to give the software exclusive control? Moreover, the way in which we have interfaced with computers and their data has not changed a huge amount since the advent of the PC. Is this flaw in interpretation speak of a bigger problem in the way humans process data vs the way machines process data?
I believe the main issue with the software is the fact that a combat situation is one where soldiers are forced to make decisions in a snap second. It is unrealistic to assume that operators are able to take all the information they get from the software, factor out the relevant data and use it to make the correct decision in the time they are given. This may be a "flaw" in the way humans process data, but unless there is a major technological advance human data process rate will not be changing any time soon. Since it would be even more detrimental to not receive the information at all then to receive an overload, I think that military engineers need to work on improving the software to better sort the data for operators to then analyze. The better it is organized, the quicker and easier soldiers are able to interpret it and the more the military will be able to reduce (in theory) the number of civilian casualties.
ReplyDelete