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Robots on the Battlefield May Represent Next Big Issue in Military Ethics

Mar 3rd, 2008 • Posted in: News

Nations are racing to deploy automated warriors; while many worry, others wonder if they couldn’t be programmed to be more ethical than humans

SHEFFIELD, England
Technology used to create gun-toting robots deployed by various armed forces around the world could endanger civilian lives and be exploited by terrorists, claims a U.K. robotics professor.

Noel Sharkey of Sheffield University says the prospect of more armed robots raises critical ethics questions. “One of the fundamental laws of war is being able to discriminate real combatants and noncombatants,” he says. “I can see no way that autonomous robots can deliver this for us,” he said, according to Scientific American.

Sharkey also warned that robots could soon replace the suicide bomber as the weapon of choice for terrorists.

“The trouble is that we can’t really put the genie back in the bottle, he told the Sheffield Telegraph. “How long is it going to be before the terrorists get in on the act?”

“With the current prices of robot construction falling dramatically and the availability of ready-made components for the amateur market, it wouldn’t require a lot of skill to make autonomous robot weapons,” Sharkey said.

Sharkey broached the issue in a speech to a British scientific convention.

But Ronald Akin, a robotics researcher at Georgia Tech, told the same assembly that robots ultimately could become a more ethical fighting force, according to a report from ABC News. He says that scientists could design ethical control systems that would compel the robots to obey the Geneva Convention.

Akin also argued that a robot may have some advantages over human soldiers. “With a robot, I can be sure that a robot will never harbor the intention to hurt a noncombatant,” he said. “Ultimately they will be able to perform better than humans.”

Many nations are ramping up development of robot weapons, reports the trade journal Technology News Daily, with the U.S. Defense Department leading the robotic arms race. About 4,000 robots currently are employed on the ground in Iraq, for example, with increasingly sophisticated programs allowing greater autonomy to the robot warriors, according to the report.

Sources: Scientific American, Feb. 28 — ABC, Feb. 28 — Sheffield Telegraph, Feb. 28 — Technology News Daily, Feb. 28.

For more information, see: Related Newsline story, Feb. 18 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 26, 3007 — Related Newsline story, Aug. 13, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Apr. 30, 2007 — Related Newsline story, Mar. 12, 2007.

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1. Ethics Newsline » News » More than 100 Nations Agree to Ban Cluster Bombs on June 2nd, 2008 at 5:44 pm:

   [...] more information, see: Related Newsline story, Mar. 3 — Related Newsline story, Jan. 22 — Related Newsline story, Nov. 15, 2004 [...]

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