A leading expert in robotics and AI technology has issued a warning that developments in military robotics could be putting civilian lives at risk.
The University of Sheffield's Professor Noel Sharkey is calling for an international debate on the matter, telling a gathering of experts in London this week that the ability of an artificially intelligent killer robot to tell friend from foe is at least 50 years away.
"Robots that can decide where to kill, who to kill and when to kill is high on all the military agendas," Professor Sharkey said, adding that discussion of military robotic ethics in the US military was "all based on artificial intelligence, and the military have a strange view of artificial intelligence based on science fiction."
Robot Ethics
Professor Sharkey claims he is neither a pacifist nor an anti-war campaigner, but issued a chilling warning that the rise in military robotics tech has not coincided with any decrease in 'collateral damage'.
Between January 2006 and April 2009, 60 "drone" attacks carried out in Pakistan killed 14 al-Qaeda, and 687 civilians.
The US Air Force publication "Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047" was published last month, which predicted the use of fully autonomous attack planes, with the human input being limited to "monitoring the execution of decisions" as opposed to actually making them.
"Advances in AI will enable systems to make combat decisions and act within legal and policy constraints without necessarily requiring human input," reads that report.
Via BBC
Your comments (2) Click to add a new comment
rsmith76
August 5th
2. The right technique is to develop robots with singular purposes rather than fully autonomous robots that can do it all. Make a set of robots that chooses targets and another robot that does the shooting. Make one robot choose which person needs healing and another robot does the traveling and heals the person.
Separate the functionality of robots so we don't have T1000's roaming the streets.
That is Plan B, in my opinion. The best option is for human-cybernetics. Our scientists and engineers should focus on enhancing human capabilities rather than outsourcing decision making to artificial intelligence.
http://new-cybernetics.romel-edmond.com
Alert a moderator
lukeow
August 4th
1. The problem with robots is the may know what there job is but how do they know when the circumstances change.How can can you develop software that take human feelings into account they can't be trusted its dangerous for humans to rely to much on them
Alert a moderator
Tell us what you think
You need to Log in or register to post comments