He said South Korea and Israel were among countries already deploying armed robot border guards. In an interview, he said there was “a headlong rush” to develop battlefield robots that make their own decisions about when to attack.
A Soldier, Taking Orders From Its Ethical Judgment Center
By CORNELIA DEAN
ATLANTA — In the heat of battle, their minds clouded by fear, anger or vengefulness, even the best-trained soldiers can act in ways that violate the Geneva Conventions or battlefield rules of engagement. Now some researchers suggest that robots could do better.
“My research hypothesis is that intelligent robots can behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can,” said Ronald C. Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech, who is designing software for battlefield robots under contract with the Army. “That’s the case I make.”
Robot drones, mine detectors and sensing devices are already common on the battlefield but are controlled by humans. Many of the drones in Iraq and Afghanistan are operated from a command post in Nevada. Dr. Arkin is talking about true robots operating autonomously, on their own.
He and others say that the technology to make lethal autonomous robots is inexpensive and proliferating, and that the advent of these robots on the battlefield is only a matter of time. That means, they say, it is time for people to start talking about whether this technology is something they want to embrace. “The important thing is not to be blind to it,” Dr. Arkin said. Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield in Britain, wrote last year in the journal Innovative Technology for Computer Professionals that “this is not a ‘Terminator’-style science fiction but grim reality.”
He said South Korea and Israel were among countries already deploying armed robot border guards. In an interview, he said there was “a headlong rush” to develop battlefield robots that make their own decisions about when to attack.
“We don’t want to get to the point where we should have had this discussion 20 years ago,” said Colin Allen, a philosopher at Indiana University and a co-author of “Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong,” published this month by Oxford University Press.
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Warfare is more efficient
Warfare is more efficient and lethal than it's ever been because we've succeeded in making it more mechanical and antiseptic than it's ever been. And that's a bad thing. We certainly don't need to further distance ourselves from moral culpability for killing. If this technology becomes prevalent, things like fratricide and murder will become "malfunctions".
We certainly don't need to
Right. Automated armies will not fight other automated armies.
On the practical side,
On the practical side, there's no way I'd trust a robot programmed by goverment contractors to point a weapon anywhere near my general direction, or even in my general vicinity. Humans might have amoral tendencies, but at least their glitches aren't hardwired.