The unique human capacity for moral judgment and ethical decision-making is more than a complex collection of algorithms, and that capacity cannot be reduced to programming a machine, which as “intelligent” as it may be, remains a machine."Autonomous Weapon Systems, including the weaponization of artificial intelligence, is a cause for grave ethical concern. Autonomous weapon systems can never be morally responsible subjects.
In the Kremlin, Yuri Andropov had recently spoken of an"unprecedented escalation" of the crisis, and on September 1, the Soviets had shot down a Korean Air Lines commercial airliner over the Kamchatka Peninsula, killing 269 people. He made the same consideration for the next four missiles that appeared shortly after on his monitors, wondering why no confirmation had come from ground radar. He knew that intercontinental missiles took less than half an hour to reach their destination, but he decided not to raise the alarm, stunning the other military personnel present.
Nuclear catastrophe was averted, even though no one came to know about the incident until the early 1990s. Petrov, who passed away in September 2017, commented on that night in the"Serpukhov 15" bunker:"What did I do? Nothing special, just my job. I was the right man in the right place at the right time."