OT: Another Big Step Toward the Coming Technological Singularity
- From: Lute <lutelatner@xxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 25 Nov 2008 05:45:36 -0800 (PST)
For those of you who do not know what the Technological Singularity
is, you can google or wikipedia it. In brief, it predicts a time when
technology will have slipped beyond our control. Evidence that this
is more than just a zany idea is accumulating. Here is one example:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/11/25/america/robot.php
Can robotized weapons systems make ethical decisions on the
battlefield?
By Cornelia Dean
Published: November 25, 2008
ATLANTA: In the heat of battle, their minds clouded by fear, anger or
vengefulness, even the best-trained soldiers can act in ways that
violate the Geneva Conventions or battlefield rules of engagement. Now
some researchers suggest that robots could do better.
"My research hypothesis is that intelligent robots can behave more
ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can," said Ronald
Arkin, a computer scientist at Georgia Tech, who is designing software
for battlefield robots under contract with the U.S. Army. "That's the
case I make."
Robot drones, mine detectors and sensing devices are already common on
the battlefield but are controlled by humans. Many of the drones in
Iraq and Afghanistan are operated from a command post in Nevada. Arkin
is talking about true robots operating autonomously, on their own.
He and others say that the technology to make lethal autonomous robots
is inexpensive and proliferating, and that the advent of these robots
on the battlefield is only a matter of time. That means, they say, it
is time for people to start talking about whether this technology is
something they want to embrace.
"The important thing is not to be blind to it," Arkin said.
Noel Sharkey, a computer scientist at the University of Sheffield in
Britain, wrote last year in the journal Innovative Technology for
Computer Professionals that "this is not a 'Terminator'-style science
fiction but grim reality."
He said South Korea and Israel were among countries already deploying
armed robot border guards. In an interview, he said there was "a
headlong rush" to develop battlefield robots that make their own
decisions about when to attack.
"We don't want to get to the point where we should have had this
discussion 20 years ago," said Colin Allen, a philosopher at Indiana
University and a co-author of "Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right
From Wrong," published this month by Oxford University Press.Randy Zachery, who directs the Information Science Directorate of the
Army Research Office, which is financing Arkin's work, said the army
hoped this "basic science" would show how human soldiers might use and
interact with autonomous systems and how software might be developed
to "allow autonomous systems to operate within the bounds imposed by
the warfighter."
"It doesn't have a particular product or application in mind," said
Zachery, an electrical engineer. "It is basically to answer questions
that can stimulate further research or illuminate things we did not
know about before."
And Lieutenant Colonel Martin Downie, a spokesman for the army, noted
that whatever emerged from the work "is ultimately in the hands of the
commander in chief, and he's obviously answerable to the American
people, just like we are."
In a report to the army last year, Arkin described some of the
potential benefits of autonomous fighting robots. For one thing, they
can be designed without an instinct for self-preservation and, as a
result, no tendency to lash out in fear. They can be built to show no
anger or recklessness, Arkin wrote, and they can be made invulnerable
to what he called "the psychological problem of 'scenario
fulfillment,"' which causes people to absorb new information more
easily if it agrees with their pre-existing ideas.
Arkin's report drew on a 2006 survey by the surgeon general of the
army, which found that fewer than half of soldiers and marines serving
in Iraq said that noncombatants should be treated with dignity and
respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated as
insurgents. More than one-third said torture was acceptable under some
conditions, and fewer than half said they would report a colleague for
unethical battlefield behavior.
Troops who were stressed, angry, anxious or mourning lost colleagues
or who had handled the dead were more likely to say they had
mistreated civilian noncombatants, the survey said. (The survey can be
read by searching for 1117mhatreport at www.global policy.org.)
"It is not my belief that an unmanned system will be able to be
perfectly ethical in the battlefield," Arkin wrote in his report, "but
I am convinced that they can perform more ethically than human
soldiers are capable of."
Arkin said he could imagine a number of ways in which autonomous robot
agents might be deployed as "battlefield assistants" - in
countersniper operations, clearing buildings of terrorists or other
dangerous assignments where there may not be time for a robotic device
to relay sights or sounds to a human operator and wait for
instructions.
But first those robots would need to be programmed with rules about
when it is acceptable to fire on a tank, and about more complicated
and emotionally fraught tasks, like how to distinguish civilians, the
wounded or someone trying to surrender from enemy troops on the
attack, and whom to shoot.
.
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