US invests in ethical warbots

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 1 Dec 2008 at 11:02

The US military is working on autonomous soldier robots capable of making ethical decisions on who to attack.

The US Government is planning to invest $4 billion into autonomous systems by 2010, and has hired researchers to help create robots that comply with the Geneva Convention, the code governing a soldier's actions in combat.

"My research hypothesis is that intelligent robots can behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can," says Ronald Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech in a report commissioned for the Army.

He argues that robots "do not need to protect themselves" and "can be designed without emotions that cloud their judgment or result in anger and frustration with ongoing battlefield events".

Pentagon chiefs have reportedly become concerned about the attitudes of troops on the battlefield, after a 2006 survey by the surgeon general of the army found that fewer than half the soldiers serving in Iraq believe civilians should be treated with respect. Indeed, 17% of those interviewed claimed that civilians needed to be treated as hostile.

The army is also undoubtedly looking to put a positive spin on its autonomous robot research, which will allow it to deploy robots into the battlefied without any human supervision.

It has already seen it draw criticism for deploying QinetiQ's SWORD war robots in Iraq.

However, Professor Noel Sharkey, an artificial intelligence expert says he is sceptical about the plans: "Giving a robot a set of ethical rules would only be useful if a robot could sense enough about the real world to know when to apply the rules. There are no AI systems now or in the near future that will be able to tell the difference between an innocent and a combatant/insurgent.

"Autonomous battlefield weapons should not be employed until they can be shown to reliably detect innocents but don't hold your breath. Despite recent rapid developments, there is still no international discussion on how robot technology will change warfare."

"I worry that Arkin's work could be used to allay public and political opposition to the development of lethal autonomous robots."

Read our feature on the future of robotics here.