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What Will Happen When Killer Robots Get Hijacked? (marketwatch.com)
"Imagine an artificial-intelligence-driven military drone capable of autonomously patrolling the perimeter of a country or region and deciding who lives and who dies, without a human operator. Now do the same with tanks, helicopters and biped/quadruped robots." A United Nations conference recently decided not to ban these weapons systems outright, but to revisit the topic in November.
So a MarketWatch columnist looked at how these weapons systems could go bad -- and argues the risks are greater than simply fooling the AI into malfunctioning. What about hijacking...? In warfare, AI units can function autonomously, but in the end they need a way to communicate with one another and to transfer data to a command center. This makes them vulnerable to hacking and hijacking. What would happen if one of these drones or robots was hijacked by an opposite faction and started firing on civilians? A hacker would laugh. Why? Because he wouldn't hijack just one. He would design a self-propagating virus that would spread throughout the AI network and infect all units in the vicinity, as well as those communicating with them. In a split second, an entire squad of lethal autonomous weapons systems would be under enemy control... Every machine can be overridden, tricked, hijacked and manipulated with an efficiency that's unheard of in the realm of human-operated traditional weaponry.
However, the U.S. government remains oblivious. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has already announced a $2 billion development campaign for the next wave of technologically advanced AI (dubbed "AI Next"). One of the goals is to have the machines "acquire human-like communication and reasoning capabilities, with the ability to recognize new situations and environments and adapt to them." I may be overreaching here, but the UN meeting on one end and this announcement on the other, make me think that the U.S. government isn't just pro-robotic -- it may already have a lethal autonomous weapons ace up its sleeve.
The article ends with a question: What do you think about killer robots replacing human combatants?
And what would happen if killer robots got hijacked?
So a MarketWatch columnist looked at how these weapons systems could go bad -- and argues the risks are greater than simply fooling the AI into malfunctioning. What about hijacking...? In warfare, AI units can function autonomously, but in the end they need a way to communicate with one another and to transfer data to a command center. This makes them vulnerable to hacking and hijacking. What would happen if one of these drones or robots was hijacked by an opposite faction and started firing on civilians? A hacker would laugh. Why? Because he wouldn't hijack just one. He would design a self-propagating virus that would spread throughout the AI network and infect all units in the vicinity, as well as those communicating with them. In a split second, an entire squad of lethal autonomous weapons systems would be under enemy control... Every machine can be overridden, tricked, hijacked and manipulated with an efficiency that's unheard of in the realm of human-operated traditional weaponry.
However, the U.S. government remains oblivious. DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) has already announced a $2 billion development campaign for the next wave of technologically advanced AI (dubbed "AI Next"). One of the goals is to have the machines "acquire human-like communication and reasoning capabilities, with the ability to recognize new situations and environments and adapt to them." I may be overreaching here, but the UN meeting on one end and this announcement on the other, make me think that the U.S. government isn't just pro-robotic -- it may already have a lethal autonomous weapons ace up its sleeve.
The article ends with a question: What do you think about killer robots replacing human combatants?
And what would happen if killer robots got hijacked?
A hacker who identifies with Thanos' agenda could start 'solving' the overpopulation problem by themselves.
the question we should be asking ourselves is what will happen when the ruling class doesn't need the working class to keep the military class in check? Right now we've got a bit of a balance going on. The Army protects the ruling class but the working class keeps an eye on the army and going into a decent civilian life after some time in the army gives them something to do besides run a Junta. Because of that there's a floor on how bad the ruling class can treat the army and the working class.
All that goes out the window when they've got a robot army. The robot army will never betray them. Sure, there's some engineers keeping it running, but they're nerds and typically lack the drive and charisma to overthrow the ruling class. Those kinds of coup are pulled off by charismatic generalissimos. So you're gonna have the ruling class, a small, well paid merchant class to keep the killer robots going and everybody else. That's you and my, btw. And the ruling class won't need us to buy their crap to be rich either. They'll own everything and have factories to build it. I suppose there'll be a few positions for their doctors and sex slaves. The rest of us get abandoned, sorta like how we ignore starving people in Africa.
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Like most ideas about revolutionizing warfare, this is something that's very old. Many many cultures would have champions fight to the death so the army did not have to.
For that to work couple things have to be true:
1) Both sides have to have a roughly equal chance of success. That is the champions have to have comparable combat power. Back then, nobody's going to agree to wager their war on a naked guy with a pointy stick vs. a Knight in full plate. With robots, many countries won't have a robot capable of going toe-to-toe against us.
2) Both sides have to want whatever they're fighting enough to raise an army to fight for it, but not so much that they'll actually die for it. If they're gonna die for it regardless of the outcome of the fight, the fight is pointless. If the result of losing a robo-war is that the President gets executed, his top guys imprisoned, and everyone else gets fired, your worst enemies get to run the country, etc. then when the champion loses you fight anyway.
3) Both asides have to trust that the other side will abide by the deal. You're not spending $1 Billion on robo-champion if you think those bastards will fight even if their robot loses.
Just go through recent US-involved wars in your head. how many are all three things true of both sides?
The Nazis and Japanese could have made some pretty cool robots, but we'd have fought the actual war regardless of who won the robo-battle. The Koreans, Vietnamese, Iraqis, Taliban wouldn't have robots anywhere near our league, so they'll lose the war and then fight anyway.