Robots on the battlefield

The Telegraph reports:

The US Army and Navy have both hired experts in the ethics of building machines to prevent the creation of an amoral Terminator-style killing machine that murders indiscriminately.

By 2010 the US will have invested $4 billion in a research programme into “autonomous systems”, the military jargon for robots, on the basis that they would not succumb to fear or the desire for vengeance that afflicts frontline soldiers.

Full Story

Once again I feel as though I’m at the start of a science fiction movie. The scientist/government say “Hey we have a fab idea – and nothing can go wrong” and, of course, it all ends-up going horribly horribly wrong.  Have these people never seen Terminator or The Matrix?

Image via Wikipedia

Yes, robots can be cool when they’re serving drinks or they’re dog shaped, but arm them with guns and missiles and you’re just asking for trouble.

The thing that really bothers me, futuristic nightmare scenarios aside, is that by removing the human element from warfare makes it so much easier to go to war. The primary reason that people object to war is because of the cost in human lives and governments have to consider whether a cause is worth their people dying for.  Who really cares if machines get blown-up?

I’m also worried about the idea of programming ethics into these machines.  Firstly any program, no matter how well funded, will have bugs and problems. For example, one estimate for the development costs of Microsoft Vista is $10 billion!

Secondly, how do you program something that hasn’t been defined?  Right and wrong isn’t black and white – it’s various shades of grey with the occasional splash of colour thrown in for good measure.  What is or isn’t ethical depends on the situation, culture and the individual. It’s a subject that philosophers have been debating since the time of Socrates.

Humans are generally quite good at deciding whether a particular course of action is right or wrong even in unique situations. They may not be able to fully explain why something is ethical or not, they just know how they feel.  Just as I feel that getting autonomous machines to do your killing for you is somehow wrong.