Milbots
Kill people, don’t they? Threat to humanity, says Brit prof.
OK, they look more like this at the moment. But … AFP:
Increasingly autonomous, gun-toting robots developed for warfare could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, a top expert on artificial intelligence told AFP.
“They pose a threat to humanity,” said University of Sheffield professor Noel Sharkey ahead of a keynote address Wednesday before Britain’s Royal United Services Institute.
Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world — from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones — can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.
There are more than 4,000 US military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.
The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-caliber machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by US arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.
But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.
It we are not careful, he said, that could change.
Military leaders “are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war,” he said.
…
“I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.
Me, too, though I wasn’t aware they were planning on letting the bots make kill/no kill decisions. I thought that was for nerdy guys with glasses, pressed uniforms and joysticks 10,000 miles away at MacDill AFB. I’d be surprised if anyone wants to surrender that authority anytime soon, particularly given the potential for high-level rear-echelon ass-biteage when an autonomous robot blows up an Afghan wedding, unlike the frontline guys who currently take the rap when those kind of mistakes are made.
The article goes on to note there are significant technological barriers to that at this point. Ronald Arkin, Georgia Institute of Technology, who’s worked on military robotics, notes there is great potential for usefulness but presently a dearth of any ethical discussion.
More on milbots at How Stuff Works.
Posted by Jules Crittenden at 10:22 am on Wednesday, February 27, 2008
9 Responses to “Milbots”
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February 27th, 2008 at 10:35 am
If it saves lives on the battlefield, why not? I think there will always have to be human intelligence guiding these things. You don’t want your killer robot indiscriminately slaughtering the women, children, and goats after all.
February 27th, 2008 at 10:52 am
Of course it’s something to worry about. As always, though, I’d prefer to be the one with the robots and the accompanying ethical dilemmas, rather than have somebody else develop them and leave us at their mercy.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Excuse me? Fall into the hands of terrorists and cause a robot arms race? Is he talking about the guys with the IEDs and cell phones? I’m not making light of the dangers of IEDs, or any of the rest of the terrorists’ arsenal of remotely controlled arms, but a robot arms race? If we haven’t rid ourselves of these terrorists by the time such a thing is even possible, we have more to be concerned about than the ethics of autonomous killing machines.
February 27th, 2008 at 11:29 am
I would favor autonomous kill-bots if they could be programed to track down and kill university profs
February 27th, 2008 at 4:21 pm
“I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me,” Sharkey said.
No problemo.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
I, for one, welcome our robotic overlords.
February 27th, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Seriously, and with all due respect to Sharkey, if he is concerned about military robots, he needs to wake up and smell the coffee, toot sweet.
The question of AI driven machinery is now a question of “How much can we cram into the package?” Robotic technology is no longer cutting edge, not when you have contests for the best driverless cars……using mostly off the shelf components. Further, robots are already displacing people for peaceful purposes, such as in manufacturing, and the trend is going no where but up. Unless the neo-Luddites stick their monkey wrenches into the works, that is.
And this is another aspect of the ever continuing arms race, a prime motivator of basic research and development. I’m not especially happy with the idea of “fire and forget” military robots, especially concerning the ever present requirement of “identification, friend or foe”, but a lot of people thought much the same when machine guns and tanks first came onto the battlefield.
And that R&D will enable us to stay up with (and hopefully ahead of) the other nations who aren’t so hesitant about new weapon platforms. If nothing else, if you know how to build them, you know how to destroy them.
February 27th, 2008 at 9:24 pm
C’mon guys, some of these robots must be robot corpsmen. So when they get decommissioned from military robot active duty, we can turn them into medical robots, and they can provide “free” health care to Democrat constituents. Win/win, no?
February 29th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
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