US Killer Robot Policy: Full Speed Ahead

Lasrick writes "Princeton's Mark Gubrud has an excellent piece on the United States killer robot policy. In 2012, without much fanfare, the U.S. announced the world's first openly declared national policy for killer robots. That policy has been widely misperceived as one of caution, according to Gubrud: 'A careful reading of the directive finds that it lists some broad and imprecise criteria and requires senior officials to certify that these criteria have been met if systems are intended to target and kill people by machine decision alone. But it fully supports developing, testing, and using the technology, without delay. Far from applying the brakes, the policy in effect overrides longstanding resistance within the military, establishes a framework for managing legal, ethical, and technical concerns, and signals to developers and vendors that the Pentagon is serious about autonomous weapons.'"

Comments

So this is how Skynet starts

[metrix007]

Asimov argued against the Frankenstein complex as it applies to robots, and indeed many people have made the point, asking how something like Skynet could happen.

Would we really be stupid enough to build something that is smarter and stronger than us, and designed to kill us without safeguards?

Apparently, yes.

Did you even RTFA?

[Anonymous Coward]

So, I'm working in the field, for the DoD. We're actually putting more work into getting them to autonomously prevent a shot that humans commanded than we are into getting them to take a shot uncommanded. The only weapons that are anywhere close to usable are anti-aircraft systems (starting in the 1970's) that have a self defense mode. Given that we're currently so cowardly in the ROE that more civillians have died in Afghanistan from our unwillingness to shoot than have died from our decisions to shoot, I'd say we're nowhere close to letting a robot make a decision, and won't be in the next decade.