Pope Leo XIV says humanity needs to disarm AI before it's too late

[Endymio]

I can't believe I have to say this in 2026....AI is already being used to murder people in mass [sic]

I can't believe you believe this nonsense.

In the US and China we already have robots used to attack trespassers.

Why spread disinformation? If you're speaking of civilian-available robots for protecting civilian property, no such robots exist -- nor will they ever, as they're legally banned.

 

[GeoffreyA]

An invasion of Japan to end the war would have killed 500,000 US troops, plus as many as ten times that of Japanese civilians. The war saved lives.

Some believe that. Some, including on the US military side, believe it wasn't necessary and Japan was already on the road to surrender. I subscribe to the latter. We won't settle it in this thread.

I personally met a woman whose life was saved by the bombing of Hiroshima: a five-year old Dutch girl held in a Japanese internment camp. Her parents and all three siblings died in that camp, and she was a few days from doing so herself, when "the bomb" ended the war and Japan surrendered.

Of course, that the Dutch girl survived and lived is excellent. Each life is priceless. But that same bombing took the lives of hundreds of thousands; and besides, it is not even certain that the bombing was necessary for Japan to surrender.

 

[abactuon]

Apocalypse (Revelations) of John 13

 

[Endymio]

it is not even certain that the bombing was necessary for Japan to surrender.

Rubbish. Here's a historical fact of which you're unaware. Even after the bombings, Japan refused surrender. Hirohito didn't change his mind until until 3 days later, when the USSR -- with its far larger and far, far closer army -- finally declared war on Japan and invaded it's Kuril Islands. Russia, refusing to do so earlier in the war, changed its mind upon seeing the instantaneous obliteration of the key industrial complexes at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And even then, a group of senior Japanese military officers, unable to bear the shame of surrender, stormed and took control of the Imperial Palace, to prevent Hirohito from the radio broadcast ending the war. When they failed, they all committed ritual suicide. That's how dedicated the Japanese were to avoiding surrender.

But wait! It gets worse. The alternative to bombing was a military blockade of Japan ... which as the islands were already on the brink of starvation, was projected to result in the deaths of up to seven million Japanese civilians:

JAPAN TARGETED FOR STARVATION - ww2 Days

Tinian, Mariana Islands · March 27, 1945 An island nation, Japan was vulnerable to a blockade of essential food and strategic materials. On this date in 1945 the U.S. Army Air Forces and the U.S. Navy, hoping to put the final nail in the enemy’s coffin, kicked off Operation Starvation,…

ww2days.com