Examining the Ethical Implications of Robots in War

Schneier points out an interesting (and long, 117-pages) paper on the ethical implications of robots in war [PDF]. "This report has provided the motivation, philosophy, formalisms, representational requirements, architectural design criteria, recommendations, and test scenarios to design and construct an autonomous robotic system architecture capable of the ethical use of lethal force. These first steps toward that goal are very preliminary and subject to major revision, but at the very least they can be viewed as the beginnings of an ethical robotic warfighter. The primary goal remains to enforce the International Laws of War in the battlefield in a manner that is believed achievable, by creating a class of robots that not only conform to International Law but outperform human soldiers in their ethical capacity."

Comments

What's the point?

[ccguy]

Obviously a country that can send robots instead of soldiers to fight is way more likely to become 'war happy' - so I'm not sure this robot thing is a good idea at all.

Besides, if your enemy expects your robots to defeat their army, what would be the point of fighting them in the first place? Attacking civilians seems a more logical step (I don't think it's reasonable to demand any country at war not to attack only military targets where there's none that can't be replaced easily).

(and no, I didn't read the whole 117 pages, but after a quick glance I reached the conclusion that whoever wrote the title didn't either, so I'm sharing my thoughts on the title, not the PDF)

Re:What's the point?

[ccguy]

This assumes that once you have destroyed your opponent's robotic army you are done. However most likely is that after the robots will come humans, so in the end you are going to lose both.

Besides, I still fail to see why a country which is likely to lose in the robotic war would accept these rules, when it makes a lot more sense to attack the other country's civil population - which in turn might reconsider the whole thing.

Fighting from the sofa is one thing, having bombs exploding nearby is quite different.

Re:What's the point?

[Sylver Dragon]

For one thing, what's the point of taking over a territory if there's nobody there to rebuild and to use as a resource?

It depends on the goals of the war. If it is a war of conquest, you are right that you want to keep the infrastructure as intact as possible, and enough civilians alive to make it useful.

On the other hand, if the war is over land or resources, an indigenous population may be counterproductive to the goal. Ultimately, you may not want the local people to interfere with the collection of or compete for those resources. In this case, mowing down the civilian population may be more productive, unless there is a need for a large, unskilled labor force for collection.

A defensive war is also a place where massive civilian casualties is an option. If the goal is the destruction of an enemy's ability to wage war, without the added goal of conquest, you would want to destroy as much of the enemy infrastructure as possible, and killing the enemy civilians also helps to destroy the ability to make war. A good example of this would be Rome's last campaign against Carthage; the city was destroyed, the people killed or enslaved, and the ground salted; not pretty, but Carthage was never a threat to Rome again. Arguably, it wasn't at the time it was destroyed either, but I'm looking at the goals and results, not the reasons. This is also where we see the firebombing of WWII, such as Dresden or Tokyo. Not exactly nice things, but they destroyed the production of the cities involved and sapped the will to fight from the people in them.

The fact is, wars are not nice, and we should never expect them to be so. In the modern age we seem to have forgotten this and have been using wars as ome sort of surgical tool to further political gain. This is a mistake, and something which we should pull off the table for our political leaders. Sadly, I don't think we will be able to do this for some time to come and without a lot of social strife.

Re:What's the point?

[williamhb]

I know I'd be a lot less upset with "Four robots were blown up by a roadside bomb today. They should be operational again by tomorrow." than to see more soldiers die. Hmm, I worry that this could indirectly make attacks on civilians seem legitimate, and turn every war into an insurgency or terrorist scenario. Think about the case with rockets: the soldier is not the rocket, it is the person that launched the rocket. In the same manner, the enemy will not see the robots as "soldiers" but as "smart bullets" -- they will see the technicians who make, build, and commission the robots as being the soldiers they should target. And the caterers and managers and universities who support the technicians as being the military logistical supply chain. No sane military opponent would restrict themselves to "just going after the robots", and suddenly we may discover that automating our soldiers has not taken people off the front line, but instead put everybody on it.

Political Ethics...

[RyanFenton]

Yes. Superior robotic ethics. A regular Ghandi-bot, saving only those who are threatened, willing to die rather than kill in doubt.

That's all well and good... but what of the men who send these robots into battle? What happens to their sense of ethics? Do they begin to believe that their sending troops into pacify a landscape over political differences is a morally superior action? Do they begin to believe that death-by-algorithm is a morally superior way of dealing with irrational people?

There's an endless array of rationalizations man can make for war, and subjugation of those who disagree with them. Taking the cost of friendly human lives out of the equation of war, and replace it with an autoturret enforcing your wishes doesn't make for a 'morally superior' political game. For many, it would make for an endgame in terms of justifying a military police as the default form of political governance.

Ryan Fenton

Re:Political Ethics...

[drijen]

If I recall, one of the Gundam Wing Anime Series, dealt with the questions of robots in war. It pointed out the most critical question of all:

War is about sacrifice, cost, and essentially fighting for what you believe in, hold dear, and WILL DIE to preserve. If you remove the *human* cost from war, then where is the cost? What will it mean if no-one dies? Will anyone remember what was fought for? Will they even recognize why it was so important in the first place?

Also, if we have mass armies of robots, won't the victor simply be the one with the most natural resources (metal, power, etc) to waste? (Better weapons technology aside)

Anyone remember Robocop?

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone remember Robocop?

Robocop: "Directive 4: Classified."
Dick: "You can't kill me. Any attempt to arrest a senior OCP employee results in shutdown."
CEO of OCP: "You're fired1"
Robocop: "Thank you." *BLAM* (throws Dick, who is no longer an employee, out the window.)

> The transformation of International Protocols and battlefield ethics into machine usable representations and real-time reasoning capabilities for bounded morality using modal logics.

Killbot: "I am unable to target that school full of unarmed children."
Private Skippy: "Now they're armed." (tosses a handgun and a magazine into the classroom.)
Killbot: "Thank you." *BLAM* (incinerates armed terrorists who illegally took over what was once a school, but which is now a legitimate military target)

Same problem...

[C10H14N2]

I've always wondered how HAL or Joshua would interpret:

Rule 1: Kill enemy combatants.
Rule 2: Do not kill or abuse prisoners.

"Take no prisoners, kill everything that moves" would be the most efficient means of satisfying both, especially after friendly-fire ensues.

Re:What if they programmed a war,and nobody logged

[Sponge Bath]

Or use an alternative 1960's solution.