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Robot Warriors Will Get a Guide To Ethics

Posted by kdawson on from the some-distance-yet-to-the-three-laws dept.

thinker sends in an MSNBC report on the development of ethical guidelines for battlefield robots. The article notes that such robots won't go autonomous for a while yet, and that the guidelines are being drawn up for relatively uncomplicated situations — such as a war zone from which all non-combatents have already fled, so that anybody who shoots at you is a legitimate target. "Smart missiles, rolling robots, and flying drones currently controlled by humans, are being used on the battlefield more every day. But what happens when humans are taken out of the loop, and robots are left to make decisions, like who to kill or what to bomb, on their own? Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, is in the first stages of developing an 'ethical governor,' a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire. His book on the subject, Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots, comes out this month."

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  1. Wish I had mod points, I'd mod you up. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Great post, man.

    But I have a buddy in the autonomous killer robot biz, and he says it's worse than that.

    See, you drop a killer robot in the village, and it immediately kills a shitload of people. The ones that live, figure out why. Then, as soon as they know that the robot destroys everything that looks like an AK47, the local up-and-coming gang leader makes an AK47 stencil and paints AK silhouettes on the old warlord's cows, house, laundry, etc. you get the picture. Then the young punk gives all the old leader's women to his buddies to rape and takes the young virgins for himself. Yay democracy! Or, at least, that's what they say when GI Joe comes to town, we are the heroes who took out the old anti-democratic leaders, yay us and you villagers better keep your cake-holes tight shut about the rape and opium parties.

    It doesn't matter what you use for a trigger - robots are inherently less complex in their behavior than humans, so the local baddies end up with the robots working for them. You just identify the kill behavior and use it, the robot builder is just providing free firepower to the local mafia in effect.

    Which is why the US military in the field abso-fucking-lutely refuses to let the robots go full autonomous. They are NOT allowed to shoot unless a callow 18-year old miles at a console away says it's OK.

    You might think I'm kidding, but I'm not. Have to be anonymous for this one!