Update: Call For Debate On Killer Robots

[parasearchers]

An international debate is needed on the use of autonomous military robots, a leading academic has said.

Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield said that a push toward more robotic technology used in warfare would put civilian life at grave risk.

Technology capable of distinguishing friend from foe reliably was at least 50 years away, he added.

However, he said that for the first time, US forces mentioned resolving such ethical concerns in their plans.

"Robots that can decide where to kill, who to kill and when to kill is high on all the military agendas," Professor Sharkey said at a meeting in London.

"The problem is that this is all based on artificial intelligence, and the military have a strange view of artificial intelligence based on science fiction."

'Odd way'

Professor Sharkey, a professor of artificial intelligence and robotics, has long drawn attention to the psychological distance from the horrors of war that is maintained by operators who pilot unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), often from thousands of miles away.

"These guys who are driving them sit there all day...they go home and eat dinner with their families at night," he said.

http://parasearcher.blogspot.com/2009/08/international-debate-is-needed-on-use.html

[dkf]

1. I would think Robots would be better able to identify who was

carrying a gun or a grenade than a human. No?

[caraher]

4. Is that sufficient?

After all, for starters, some people who are armed are not "the bad guys." Add to that all the issues of assessing intentions that machine intelligence is far from up to at this stage...

Personally, I think remote-controlled killing machines are more than bad enough. While I appreciate the impulse to protect our soldiers from harm, I think the ability to kill, destroy and maim "safely" is inherently corrupting and should never be expanded lightly.

[dkf]

14. I would say that if you sent a robot like this into a fortress of

hostiles, that anyone carrying a gun or a grenade can be assumed to be the enemy. I would hope this would be beyond a visual ID, but instead a detection of chemicals or explosives.

[Posteritatis]

6. Realtime image recognition and parsing is still tough to do well

Am I carrying a grenade, or a dark-colored football (or fruit, or bottle of Pepsi, or shoe held at an odd angle, etc)? Am I carrying a gun or a tool or toy of some sort - and if I am carrying a gun, am I carrying it to shoot the robot's creators, or to fight alongside them, or to give it to them as I found it in the alley five minutes ago?

It's an interesting area, and definitely not just for the military applications; it's also surprisingly complex, far moreso than you'd expect in most fiction.

[valerief]

2. Doesn't war put civilian life at risk anyway?

:shrug:

[timeforpeace]

3. News flash: the deadliest military robots that can ever exist are right now bombing Pakistan and we

aren't even at war with then, officially or legally that is. Heard of Predator drones? It's been in all the papers.

[Orrex]

5. I wasn't aware that Predator drones are autonomous

Robot autonomy seems to be the focus of the article, after all.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

8. They are not...the poster does not know what they are posting about n/t

[ProgressiveProfessor]

7. That is a very silly statement

Predators have no combat AI, all the decisions are made by controllers many many miles away. They are not robots or self controlling.

[Aragorn]

11. nobody gets it

but you are right.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

9. Sharkey is way too late n/t

[parasearchers]

10. Predators will likely be, sort of the great grandaddy of future AI Hunter Killers

Remember them from Terminator?

Something like that fitted with an AI would be the end result of the old Predators, since a Predator is simply a piloted drone.

Like a Model T compared to a Lotus Esprit.

[Aragorn]

12. both 4 cylinder

and the Model T was more sturdy.

[parasearchers]

13. heheh,