robot soldiers

The dangers of letting robots do our killing for us …

“The Grand Challenge race is part of the Pentagon's effort to cut the risk of casualties by fulfilling a congressional mandate to have a third of all military ground vehicles unmanned by 2015.”

It seems to me that the single most discouraging factor against rushing into battle is that the person doing the rushing will be harmed or killed. If we let robots do our dirty work, then what really is the deterrence? What will slow us down to negotiate, to allow diplomacy the first try at settling differences? None to little, if there isn’t any risk in going to war, at least for the nation with the robot army?

Sure, robots are nice for surveillance, spotting our enemies, gather evidence. Robots are good for clearing landmines and obstacles. But if they are actually putting a bullet into our foes, it takes the ‘dirty’ out of something that is supposed to ugly, filthy and deadly.

We’re breaching the point where our robots are truly going to be autonomous on the battlefield. Already we’ve used remotely piloted aircraft to target and destroy human targets, removing any danger to the actual human in control. At some point even the human element will be removed from the fight.

We’re on a dangerous slippery slope. We can't send machines into do our dirty work. If you need to fight a war, you can’t remove yourself from the consequences. It’s has to be deadly, bloody and the last thing you would ever want to do on Earth. I’m afraid if we have AI automation of our wars, the horror of losing life and limb will be removed from a very unbalanced equation.

Death on only one side of a battle is a massacre not a battle.


Links: Project REDOWL, Ethical Questions on AI, Asimov's Laws of Robotics, Yahoo Full Coverage: Robots, Scots’ Robot Soldiers, DARPA Challenge