Killer Military Robot Arms Race Underway?

coondoggie writes to tell us NetworkWorld is reporting that one researcher seems to think that a military robot arms race may be imminent between both governments and terrorists. "We are beginning to see the first steps towards an international robot arms race and it may not be long before robots become a standard terrorist weapon to replace the suicide bomber, according to professor Noel Sharkey, from the Royal United Services Institute Department of Computer Science. [...] Currently there is always a human in the loop to decide on the use of lethal force. However, this is set to change with the US giving priority to autonomous weapons - robots that will decide on where, when and who to kill, according to the professor."

Comments

Cats and newspapers

[Harmonious Botch]

Until someone can build an automatic vacuum cleaner that does not try to eat my cat, or an automated lawnmower that does not trim the newspaper, I'm not going to worry.
Even if the tech does reach that level, building a military bot is another level beyond that. And somehow, I think that it is not going to be well understood by guys whose concept of hi-tech is a retractable box knife.
It's gonna be a longgg time before I worry.

3-2-1 ACTIVATE

[Mushdot]

I think this is a natural progression for nations with an organised military. Once the basics are down machines can be churned out much quicker than we can train humans and you don't need to be as accurate and quick thinking as a human would be - sheer numbers and a shotgun approach would suffice and so who has the greatest manufacturing capacity would have the advantage.

Looking further into the future I'm sure wars will be fought totally on a technological basis e.g. hacking networks to shut down utilities and enemy soldiers to disable them etc. Maybe even further along wars will be won and lost without loss of human life - "Ok we surrender, we have no food, water or power and our Unisols are pointing their guns at us. You can have our continent."

I may have the wrong sci-fi series but I'm sure I remember a Star Trek episode where wars were fought by computer and afterward the required number of human casualties were euthanised to balance the books? Maybe at that point the geek shall inherit the earth and FPS skills will finally be recognised for what they are :-)

Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad

[stoolpigeon]

From what I've read - and I'm no expert - they recruit heavily from many parts of the world, and I think it has been pretty well documented, that they have also used unwilling participants by either lying to them or taking advantage of people with limited mental capacity. I've seen television footage on youtube and such that seems to indicate that in places like Palestine they are doing their best to indoctrinate children in a manner that will make them more likely to be candidates when they get older.
 
I would think that automated weaponry can only help counter-terrorism forces, unless there is some kind of huge mishap or malfunction. The terrorists depend on fighting the will of their opponent. Would so many in the US be so hot to leave Iraq if there were not so many American casualties? I personally doubt it.
 
On a side note - I'm not interested in debating foreign policy or the situation in the middle east as far as who's at fault, right/wrong, etc. Just commenting on what I know of current conditions.

Always a human in the loop

[trybywrench]

There will always be a human in the loop as far as semi-autonomous weapons go. I'm surprised anyone on slashdot would think otherwise. Maybe 50 years from now an AI would have the intelligence to separate friend from foe from bystander but the tech is simply not there now.

I imagine what we'll see is weapons deployed around the world with their controllers located somewhere else safe. That means easier/faster deployment and none of your own soldiers in harm's way. Maybe UAV's push proposed targets to commanders instead of commanders pouring over recon :shrug: i can see that but not a pure autonomous firefight. For a long time a human will be giving the final OK to fire.

Re:The future

[Wylfing]

Pah! You forgot "Second Variety" by Philip K. Dick. Now that is a story about exactly what is under discussion: an escalating robot arms race that turns out quite poorly for everyone.

Re:Meanwhile, in Baghdad

[krou]

I'm not entirely sure that's correct at all. There's been fairly good research into this. For example, see Robert Pape's "The Logic of Suicide Terrorism" (interview here):

The central fact is that overwhelmingly suicide-terrorist attacks are not driven by religion as much as they are by a clear strategic objective: to compel modern democracies to withdraw military forces from the territory that the terrorists view as their homeland. From Lebanon to Sri Lanka to Chechnya to Kashmir to the West Bank, every major suicide-terrorist campaign--over 95 percent of all the incidents--has had as its central objective to compel a democratic state to withdraw.

...

If Islamic fundamentalism were the pivotal factor, then we should see some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world, like Iran, which has 70 million people--three times the population of Iraq and three times the population of Saudi Arabia--with some of the most active groups in suicide terrorism against the United States. However, there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Iran, and we have no evidence that there are any suicide terrorists in Iraq from Iran.

Sudan is a country of 21 million people. Its government is extremely Islamic fundamentalist. The ideology of Sudan was so congenial to Osama bin Laden that he spent three years in Sudan in the 1990s. Yet there has never been an al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from Sudan.

I have the first complete set of data on every al-Qaeda suicide terrorist from 1995 to early 2004, and they are not from some of the largest Islamic fundamentalist countries in the world. Two thirds are from the countries where the United States has stationed heavy combat troops since 1990.

Another point in this regard is Iraq itself. Before our invasion, Iraq never had a suicide-terrorist attack in its history. Never. Since our invasion, suicide terrorism has been escalating rapidly with 20 attacks in 2003, 48 in 2004, and over 50 in just the first five months of 2005. Every year that the United States has stationed 150,000 combat troops in Iraq, suicide terrorism has doubled.

That's not to say that some very vocal minority groups may be saying what you describe, but the reality seem to be very different for the majority.