Algorithms, AI, and Ethics of War

In the episode, “A Taste of Armageddon,” of the science fiction television show Star Trek: The Original Series, the crew of the Enterprise visit a pair of planets that have been engaging in computer-simulated war for over 500 years. To prevent the destruction of their societies, the two planets signed a treaty whereby the wars would be fought fictitiously with a computer-generated outcome, yet the casualties would be real, with the tabulated victims voluntarily reporting to be killed. Captain Kirk destroys the war simulation computers and is condemned because without the computers to fight the war, real war would be inevitable. Yet, the reason the war had gone on for so long was precisely because the simulation had insulated both societies from the horrors of war, thus, they had little reason to end it.