Intruder terminator: A high-tech, machine gun-toting sentry robot employed by South Korea. Built by Samsung, the robot is designed to support troops in detecting and killing intruders along the heavily fortified border with North Korea.
Credit: AFP
PARIS: Autonomous, gun-totting robots, developed for warfare, could easily fall into the hands of terrorists and may one day unleash a robot arms race, says an expert on artificial intelligence.
"They pose a threat to humanity," said AI scientist Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield in England, ahead of a presentation this week to Britain's Royal United Services Institute.
Intelligent machines deployed on battlefields around the world – from mobile grenade launchers to rocket-firing drones – can already identify and lock onto targets without human help.
Increasingly autonomous
There are more than 4,000 U.S. military robots on the ground in Iraq, as well as unmanned aircraft that have clocked hundreds of thousands of flight hours.
The first three armed combat robots fitted with large-calibre machine guns deployed to Iraq last summer, manufactured by U.S. arms maker Foster-Miller, proved so successful that 80 more are on order, said Sharkey.
But up to now, a human hand has always been required to push the button or pull the trigger.
It we are not careful, he said, that could change. Military leaders "are quite clear that they want autonomous robots as soon as possible, because they are more cost-effective and give a risk-free war," he said.
Several countries, led by the United States, have already invested heavily in robot warriors developed for use on the battlefield.
Robotic border patrols
South Korea and Israel both deploy armed robot border guards, while China, India, Russia and Britain have all increased the use of military robots.
Washington plans to spend four billion dollars by 2010 on unmanned technology systems, with total spending expected rise to 24 billion, according to the Department of Defence's Unmanned Systems Roadmap 2007-2032 report, released in December.
James Canton, an expert on technology innovation and CEO of the Institute for Global Futures, predicts that deployment within a decade of detachments that will include 150 soldiers and 2,000 robots. The use of such devices by terrorists should be a serious concern, said Sharkey.
Captured robots would not be difficult to reverse engineer, and could easily replace suicide bombers as the weapon-of-choice. "I don't know why that has not happened already," he said.
Fully independent killing machines
But even more worrisome, he continued, is the subtle progression from the semi-autonomous military robots deployed today to fully independent killing machines.
"I have worked in artificial intelligence for decades, and the idea of a robot making decisions about human termination terrifies me," Sharkey said.
Ronald Arkin of Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, who has worked closely with the U.S. military on robotics, agrees that the shift towards autonomy will be gradual. But he is not convinced that robots don't have a place on the front line. "Robotics systems may have the potential to out-perform humans from a perspective of the laws of war and the rules of engagement," he told a conference on technology in warfare at Stanford University, California, last month.
The sensors of intelligent machines, he argued, may ultimately be better equipped to understand an environment and to process information. "And there are no emotions that can cloud judgement, such as anger," he added.
For now, however, there remain several barriers to the creation and deployment of Terminator-like killing machines.
Some are technical. Teaching a computer-driven machine – even an intelligent one – how to distinguish between civilians and combatants, or how to gauge a proportional response as mandated by the Geneva Conventions, is simply beyond the reach of artificial intelligence today.
An issue of ethics
But even if technical barriers are overcome, the prospect of armies increasingly dependent on remotely controlled or autonomous robots raises a host of ethical issues that have barely been addressed.
Arkin points out that the U.S. Department of Defence's 230 billion dollar Future Combat Systems program – the largest military contract in U.S. history – provides for three classes of aerial and three land-based robotics systems. "But nowhere is there any consideration of the ethical implications of the weaponisation of these systems," he said.
For Sharkey, the best solution may be an outright ban on autonomous weapons systems. "We have to say where we want to draw the line and what we want to do – and then get an international agreement," he said.
Issac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics
Issac Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are a set of three rules written by Isaac Asimov, which almost all positronic robots appearing in his fiction must obey. Introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", although foreshadowed in a few earlier stories, the Laws state the following:-
A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Robots and Robotics. Computer Control. Computer Engineering. links