US attempts to calm fears over 'killer robots'
Marie Donlon | March 11, 2019Following word that it is searching for a partner to help upgrade its current aiming systems, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced that humans will continue to make the final decision surrounding whether armed robots can shoot at a target.
The U.S. Department of Defense spoke to concerns that upgrades to its current Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (Atlas), which is employed in ground combat vehicles to assist human gunners, would enable gun platforms to select their own targets on the battlefield thanks to machine learning upgrades. The U.S. Department of Defense insists that current rules governing armed robots will remain in effect and that humans can veto any actions despite language that some critics felt suggested otherwise.
According to the proposal, the military was in search of commercial partners to help develop systems to "acquire, identify, and engage targets at least three times faster than the current manual process."
However, the U.S. Army updated the proposal, explaining that it remains committed to the existing rules surrounding human-robot relations known as the Department of Defense's Directive 3000.09, which, in summary, is a policy that requires a human finger on every trigger.
Professor Michael Horowitz, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior adjunct fellow at the Center for New American Security, said "It is critical that any revisions to the Atlas program...clarify the degree of autonomy and the level of human involvement in the use of force."
I don't care what the DoD says.
The appeal of totally automated killing machines to various individuals or groups of a questionable moral outlook, of which there are many, means this technology will be developed by somebody eventually, if it hasn't been already.
Though as an earthbound society, our higher-minded thinkers have derided the indiscriminate use of force, such as in war, for nearly a century now, that has not prevented war from continuing to occur.
That is because - I might hazard to note - war and similar atrocities are not just the creations of overzealous governments or military groups, but really are created by persons who are insane but can appear otherwise, and thus influence governments or other armed groups to undertake violent actions.
Until the technology for identifying and removing such persons from positions of power and influence is widely in place, we will continue to have the problem of indiscriminate mass violence on Earth, regardless of whether killer robots are ever employed. Though the DoD says they would NEVER develop such a capability, I am not much reassured.
ISO 13482:2014 covers safety of military or public force application robots. I'm sure all of them will comply. There will be an easily accessible Red Emergency Stop pushbutton with a yellow background. Simply push it before being shot and you'll be fine.