The Campaign To Stop Killer Robots has warned putting them in charge of life and death decisions can never be undone.
Just days after the US military announced Project Quarterback , an initiative to put Artificial Intelligence in charge of military units for split-second decision-making, the pressure group has spoken out about the dangers of autonomous killer robots.
The group has called on the international community to draft a treaty that will regulate air, land and sea craft that can go into combat without any human intervention.
Jody Williams, who won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1997 for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Land Mines, has spoken out on behalf of the group.
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She told a meeting at the United Nations putting AI in charge of life-and-death decisions is a dangerous decision that can never be undone: "A machine is not a moral anything. It's a machine.
"So allowing machines to – in theory – [use algorithms to] decide what they will target and what they will attack is one of the huge reasons why we consider it to be crossing the Rubicon and grossly unethical and immoral.”
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Apparently referring directly to Project Quarterback she added: "Machines should be in the service of human beings. Human beings should not be in the service of machines."
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While a number of smaller states have signed up to the Campaign To Stop Killer Robots initiative to ban autonomous combat vehicles, Russia and America are holding out against the rising tide.
“Russia and United States repeatedly rejected any references in the meeting’s final report on the need for human control” over the use of force,” they said.
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“Both states are investing significant funds to develop weapons systems with decreasing human control over the critical functions of selecting and engaging targets.”
The group also points out if mistakes were made, or war crimes committed, it’s difficult to decide who would be deemed responsible: “It’s unclear who, if anyone, could be held responsible for unlawful acts caused by a fully autonomous weapon: the programmer, manufacturer, commander, [or the] machine itself."
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“This accountability gap would make it is difficult to ensure justice, especially for victims.”
The Campaign To Stop Killer Robots say that governments should move to create a treaty to ban killer robots, and that weapons manufacturers an tech companies to make an undertaking neve rot build autonomous combat robots.
- Artificial Intelligence
- Military
- China
- Russia
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