# A War Machine Cannot Learn Safely From Real War by Norbert Wiener > "It is quite out of the question to program these machines on the basis of an actual experience in real war. For one thing, a sufficient experience to give an adequate programming would probably see humanity already wiped out." > **— Norbert Wiener**, *1960, “Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation,” Science 131(3410)* ## Sources and Context - **Full source:** [Norbert Wiener, “Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation,” Science 131(3410), 1960](https://www.cs.umd.edu/users/gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/moral.pdf). The argument exposes a training-and-testing problem when failure would be catastrophic. ## Related Articles and Collections - **Collection:** [[collections/Machine Succession|Machine Succession]] - **Collection:** [[collections/Simple Reminders|Simple Reminders]] - **Article:** [[articles/AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor|AI Escape Is the Wrong Metaphor]] - **Article:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] - **Article:** [[articles/The Next Interface Layer|The Next Interface Layer]] - **Wiki map:** [[wiki/AI Safety|AI Safety]] ## Related Topics - [[wiki/Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation|Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation]] - [[wiki/AI Safety|AI Safety]] ## Share on Social Media ``` "It is quite out of the question to program these machines on the basis of an actual experience in real war. For one thing, a sufficient experience to give an adequate programming would probably see humanity already wiped out." — Norbert Wiener, 1960, “Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation,” Science 131(3410) https://bryantmcgill.com/simple-reminders-wiener-real-war-training ```