Military Robots and the Laws of War
Mar. 9th, 2009 01:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
109By P. W. Singer. Some excerpts:
One new robot that iRobot’s designers are especially excited to show off is the Warrior. Warrior can go at 15 miles per hour for five hours, while carrying one hundred pounds — yet it is agile enough to fit through a doorway and go up stairs. It is really just a mobile platform, with a USB port — a universal connector — on top that can be used to plug in sensors, a gun, and a TV camera for battle, or an iPod and loudspeakers for a mobile rave party. The long-term strategy is for other companies to focus on the plug-in market while iRobot corners the market for the robotic platforms. What Microsoft did for the software industry, iRobot hopes to do for the robotics industry.
In technology circles, new products that change the rules of the game, such as what the iPod did to portable music players, are called “killer applications.” Foster-Miller’s new product gives this phrase a literal meaning. The Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System (SWORDS) is the first armed robot designed to roam the battlefield... can carry pretty much any weapon that weighs under three hundred pounds, ranging from an M-16 rifle and .50-caliber machine gun to a 40mm grenade launcher or an antitank rocket launcher. The robot can drive through snow and sand, and can even drive underwater down to depths of one hundred feet, meaning it could pop up in quite unexpected places. Likewise, its battery allows it to be hidden somewhere in “sleep” mode for at least seven days and then wake up to shoot away at any foes.
New version, named after the Roman god of war — the MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System), carries a more powerful machine gun, 40mm grenade launchers, and, for non-lethal settings, a green laser “dazzler,” tear gas, and a loudspeaker, perfect for warning any insurgents that “Resistance is futile.”
Using a computer mouse, the operator just clicks to tell it (Predator) to taxi and take off, and the drone flies off on its own. The plane then carries out its mission, getting directions on where to fly from GPS coordinates downloaded off a satellite. Upon its return, “you basically hit the land button,” describes one retired Air Force officer. The other part of the appeal is that the remote pilots are just regular soldiers; one cook from the 1st Cavalry Division is actually considered among the best pilots in the entire force.
Among the UAVs likely to see action in those future conflicts will be Predators reconfigured for electronic warfare, submarine hunting, and even air-to-air combat; the Reaper, a bigger, smarter, and more powerful successor to the Predator; a variety of planned micro-UAVs, some the size of insects; the Peregrine, a drone designed to find and shoot down other drones; and even an unmanned stealth bomber.
The legal questions related to autonomous systems are also extremely sticky. In 2002, for example, an Air National Guard pilot in an F-16 saw flashing lights underneath him while flying over Afghanistan at twenty-three thousand feet and thought he was under fire from insurgents. Without getting required permission from his commanders, he dropped a 500-pound bomb on the lights. They instead turned out to be troops from Canada on a night training mission. Four were killed and eight wounded. If these same Canadian forces had been attacked by an autonomous UCAV, determining who is accountable proves difficult. Would accountability lie with the civilian software programmers who wrote target identification software?
Even more worrisome, the concept of keeping human beings in the loop is being eroded by policymakers and by the technology itself, both of which are rapidly moving toward pushing humans out.
Just as any human’s right to self-defense is limited, so too should be a robot’s. This sounds simple enough, but oddly the Pentagon has already pushed the legal interpretation that our drones have an inherent right to self-defense, including even to preemptively fire on potential threats.
The human creators of autonomous robots must be held accountable for the machines’ actions. If a programmer gets an entire village blown up by mistake, he should be criminally prosecuted, not get away scot-free or merely be punished with a monetary fine his employer’s insurance company will end up paying. (Note from 109: I wonder if we'll see modified GNU license like: free to use except for killing people).
http://thenewatlantis.com/publications/military-robots-and-the-laws-of-war
109: can't wait to see the test suite for Terminator's ethical subroutine...
One new robot that iRobot’s designers are especially excited to show off is the Warrior. Warrior can go at 15 miles per hour for five hours, while carrying one hundred pounds — yet it is agile enough to fit through a doorway and go up stairs. It is really just a mobile platform, with a USB port — a universal connector — on top that can be used to plug in sensors, a gun, and a TV camera for battle, or an iPod and loudspeakers for a mobile rave party. The long-term strategy is for other companies to focus on the plug-in market while iRobot corners the market for the robotic platforms. What Microsoft did for the software industry, iRobot hopes to do for the robotics industry.
In technology circles, new products that change the rules of the game, such as what the iPod did to portable music players, are called “killer applications.” Foster-Miller’s new product gives this phrase a literal meaning. The Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System (SWORDS) is the first armed robot designed to roam the battlefield... can carry pretty much any weapon that weighs under three hundred pounds, ranging from an M-16 rifle and .50-caliber machine gun to a 40mm grenade launcher or an antitank rocket launcher. The robot can drive through snow and sand, and can even drive underwater down to depths of one hundred feet, meaning it could pop up in quite unexpected places. Likewise, its battery allows it to be hidden somewhere in “sleep” mode for at least seven days and then wake up to shoot away at any foes.
New version, named after the Roman god of war — the MAARS (Modular Advanced Armed Robotic System), carries a more powerful machine gun, 40mm grenade launchers, and, for non-lethal settings, a green laser “dazzler,” tear gas, and a loudspeaker, perfect for warning any insurgents that “Resistance is futile.”
Using a computer mouse, the operator just clicks to tell it (Predator) to taxi and take off, and the drone flies off on its own. The plane then carries out its mission, getting directions on where to fly from GPS coordinates downloaded off a satellite. Upon its return, “you basically hit the land button,” describes one retired Air Force officer. The other part of the appeal is that the remote pilots are just regular soldiers; one cook from the 1st Cavalry Division is actually considered among the best pilots in the entire force.
Among the UAVs likely to see action in those future conflicts will be Predators reconfigured for electronic warfare, submarine hunting, and even air-to-air combat; the Reaper, a bigger, smarter, and more powerful successor to the Predator; a variety of planned micro-UAVs, some the size of insects; the Peregrine, a drone designed to find and shoot down other drones; and even an unmanned stealth bomber.
The legal questions related to autonomous systems are also extremely sticky. In 2002, for example, an Air National Guard pilot in an F-16 saw flashing lights underneath him while flying over Afghanistan at twenty-three thousand feet and thought he was under fire from insurgents. Without getting required permission from his commanders, he dropped a 500-pound bomb on the lights. They instead turned out to be troops from Canada on a night training mission. Four were killed and eight wounded. If these same Canadian forces had been attacked by an autonomous UCAV, determining who is accountable proves difficult. Would accountability lie with the civilian software programmers who wrote target identification software?
Even more worrisome, the concept of keeping human beings in the loop is being eroded by policymakers and by the technology itself, both of which are rapidly moving toward pushing humans out.
Just as any human’s right to self-defense is limited, so too should be a robot’s. This sounds simple enough, but oddly the Pentagon has already pushed the legal interpretation that our drones have an inherent right to self-defense, including even to preemptively fire on potential threats.
The human creators of autonomous robots must be held accountable for the machines’ actions. If a programmer gets an entire village blown up by mistake, he should be criminally prosecuted, not get away scot-free or merely be punished with a monetary fine his employer’s insurance company will end up paying. (Note from 109: I wonder if we'll see modified GNU license like: free to use except for killing people).
http://thenewatlantis.com/publications/military-robots-and-the-laws-of-war
109: can't wait to see the test suite for Terminator's ethical subroutine...
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-09 10:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-10 04:57 am (UTC)Дикие какие-то, EULA не видели ни разу?