From DefenseNews

 

Expert: Robots Used for War Are Threat to Humanity

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE

Published: 27 Feb 08:18 EST (03:18 GMT)

 

PARIS - 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 Feb. 26 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 U.S. 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 U.S. arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, Sharkey said.

 

But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.

 

If 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.

 

Several countries, led by the U.S., have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.

 

South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.

 

Washington plans to spend $4 billion by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to $24 billion, according to the Pentagon's Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032, released in December.

 

James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots.

 

The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, Sharkey said.

 

Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse-engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon of choice.

 

"I don't know why that has not happened already," he said.

 

But even more worrisome, he said, is the subtle progression from the semiautonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.

 

"I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me," Sharkey said.

 

Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, who has worked closely with the U.S. military on robotics, agrees that the shift toward autonomy will be gradual.

 

But he is not convinced that robots don't have a place on the front line.

 

"Robotics systems may have the potential to outperform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement," he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University last month.

 

The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information.

 

"And there are no emotions that can cloud judgment, such as anger," he added.

 

Nor is there any inherent right to self-defense.

 

For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.

 

Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine - even an intelligent one - how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.

 

But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remote-controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.

 

Arkin points out that the U.S. Defense Department's $230 billion Future Combat Systems program - the largest military contract in U.S. history - provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems.

 

"But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponization of these systems," he said.

 

For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems.

 

"We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do - and then get an international agreement," he said.

 

[CV32: I happen to be a fan of fiction (movies and books alike) depicting artificial intelligence bent on human destruction (eg. Terminator), but in any event, are the concerns mentioned in the above article just silly or are they rooted in some measure of sense? ]

"Threat to humanity?" Yeah, they said that about the crossbow, back in the middle ages, too. It wasn't true then, either. I suppose a killer robot might have some temporary added value as a terrorist weapon, based on its novelty, but honestly, it's going to be a whole lot easier just to plant a couple of bombs at the local mall.

 

"Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse-engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon of choice." Ummm, okay ... and if you have the ability to reverse-engineer the robot, just exactly what is it that keeps you from making your own to start with, regardless of whether you have a (captured) model to work from?!? The tricky part in making a combat robot is the software that tells it what NOT to kill. That's rather superfluous for terrorism.

 

"The idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me." As opposed to, say, a terrified 18-year-old draftee? I think I might prefer the robot, myself ...

 

"We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do - and then get an international agreement," Ahhh, yes, the International Agreement. Because terrorists and rogue states *always* respect them!

 

This is ... <ahem> ... nonsense. My biggest concern with combat robots would be that they might, by lowering or eliminating the domestic human toll, make it too easy for our elected politicians to decide to get involved in a war. We're dangerously close to that point already.

Warhorse64 says it all for me, on all accounts.

 

That is in the large scale robots, ones we can see and know what they are doing. The tiny ones do worry me, the nanometer sized robots, whether intelligent or not, scare me. Once those suckers are copying themselves (and since they are so hard to make, that's exactly where much of the research is centered) billions of times using their inputs which may be as simple as sunlight and dirt/sand, life could get very bad for humanity. I would at first glance compare it to biological weaponry, while we've been lucky to avoid major chem/bio attacks by terrorists/crazy regimes, I'd call it luck, just the same as it is luck if we don't face a major nanite infestation or genetically engineered crop go awry in the next decade or too.

Tony, don't read Michael Crichton's book "Prey".