Comments on: Q&A: The robot wars have arrived

Brookings Institution fellow P.W. Singer warns that we need a plan for the robot war games many don't realize are already under way.

[Vesicant]

> Singer: That's the essence of the problem of trying to apply a set of laws that are so old they qualify for Medicare to these kind of 21st-century dilemmas that come with this 21st-century technology.

This kind of thinking is simply wrong. The commander is responsible. Just because the combatants are robots doesn't change the rules. If an Abrams tank goes out of control and runs over a family and their cute dog, the commander is responsible. If human troops rape and pillage, the commander is responsible. Saying "well, they're robots" is not essentially different from saying "I was just following orders." It's a simple, logical, and reasonable expansion of Nuremberg. "Befehl ist Befehl" didn't work then, and "I'm not bad, I was programmed that way" isn't going to work now.

[gsigas]

I disagree. If an Abrams tank has a system failure that causes it to run over a family (or explode and kill everyone in the area), eventhough the operators were trying their best to stop it, the commander is not responsible, unless the failure was due to negligent maintenence or operation/training. The same could be true of a robotic weapon, if the operator gives one command and the weapon does something else who is responsible?

[Super2online]

I spent 17 years in the Navy and I can tell you without a doubt that Vesicant is absolutely right. When the peverbial "sh**" hits the fan, the operator and the person in charge will be the ones that are held accountable, not the robot, or whoever designed, manufactured, or deployed the things. The military is unforgiving, there's going to be a fall guy/girl and somone is going down hard.

[gsigas]

I think this was what was being hinted at, that such an approach (based on current thinking/laws about responsibility) would be ineffective and outdated with regards to robotic weapons.

[allen b--2008]

Vesicant, I think the question is a little different then you think. It's about the robots going astray. If they are ordered to do something I agree, the commander is at fault. If they are passing through a village and suddenly open fire on that group of kids playing soccer, is it the commanders fault, the programmers fault, the builders fault, the governments fault? I believe that is what Singer is trying to say with that statement about old laws and new technology.

[Dalkorian]

You know, we CAN apply this to even yesterday's technology. What if a troop was going through a town and their howitzer suddenly started going off uncontrollably, shooting children in the streets.

War sucks and it would be chalked up as such. The gun manufacturer won't be (necessarily) be blamed, the troops won't necessarily be blamed and their commander won't necessarily be blamed (all this is out the window if someone did something wrong that precipitated this, of course - failed to maintain the weapon properly or was 'having fun" targeting the kids).

[chili_picante]

As far as remote warfare, I think that the big picture is being missed. If we can go to war without risking our lives, won?t we be more likely to go to war?
Singer?s analogy about cowardice and gunpowder does not work with remote warfare, because there is no risk of life for the person controlling a soldier robot from a remote location outside of the combat arena.
Conversely, if we don?t develop this technology, then we?ll be fighting someone else?s robots.
I don?t like it. Not one bit.

[Dalkorian]

When the norm was marching up to your enemy and fighting him face to face with swords, the people with gunpowder also had no risk of life due to being outside the combat arena. It may not seem the same to us today (everyone has guns now), but really it is.

[t8]

The best way to recruit operators of droid robots for combat is to use the best gamers. The military could recruit a cyberforce of gamers who sitting in safety and comfort while operating an assigned droid in combat.

[Dalkorian]

Enders Game by Orson Scott Card. You don't even have to tell them their fighting a war!

[neophilus]

"The commander is responsible"? LOL, not likely. Remember what Gen. Tommy Franks said - "We don't do body counts." Civilian casualties don't matter, they aren't counted. When that robot blows away half a village of innocent people because its circuits got fried nobody is going down for that. No one is going to get in trouble. Its just one more "oh well" moment in war and everyone moves on. And don't think for a moment all the people watching from home on CNN are gonna care... they're just going to cheer when more infrared bodies get blown to bits.

[femtobeam]

I am a 25 year veteran pioneer in the HDTV industry. I have watched it go from analog CRT to digital flat screen and from tape to disk and internet to "HD" streaming video. The real issue is the advancements in hardware which is controlled by standards not in Western States control. A "bad" computer chip nearly started WWIII, according to Dr. Robert (Bob) Bowman of The Patriots in his book entitled, "Star Wars: Defense or Death Star". Software in all it's sophisticated forms has become "open source" in a drive to make different pieces of hardware work together, mostly by unpaid, well meaning, software programmers. All of this is simply creating revenue for the mostly Asian hardware manufacturers, who control the standards in standards setting bodies. Where it becomes a problem is with the integrations of new hardware to the world interconnected systems, including the new optical revolution...which is way beyond digital. The ability to remotely control a robot is done via broadband networks which are in the control of a few elite network landowners who own the fiber optics backbones and the equipment they use, mostly to a wireless cell tower and from there to the antennas located on the robotic devices. Hackers are the ones to blame if something goes wrong with a robot that was not ordered by the Defense Department in a time of war. The telephone companies are the ones with the information about it, if they can trace the source at all. Now we are living in a multipoint to multipoint world with mobile devices tied into the grid, appropriately named "The Cloud" for its ubiquitous and fuzzy, unknown, nature. The truth about robotics is that it is we humans who will be the robots, controlled via our implants. We will be accessed interactively through "the cloud" directly to and from our brains and nervous systems. The truth about this is a closely guarded secret. The question is why? Is it to keep the movement of the "New Wireless World Order" in charge of world domination? Or is it because no-one has figured out how to make the world wide communications network safe for computers, let alone robots and brain interfaced people?

[JoshuaFalken]

It sounds like, with robots in combat, we run the real risk of eventually perceiving war as... pointless.

We should be so lucky.

[yanchineseguy]

Joshua, unfortunately, we'll never be that lucky because defense contractors are making money manufacturing these weapons. War is already pointless, but it's still profitable. But we'll never stop going to war until it has wiped us all out.

[zarchon1]

yanchineseguy, sorry to disagree. I find it hard to believe that you think we only have war because it makes money. People can sit down and try to work out their differences. But sometimes the only method that will result in an resolution is to duke it out, The best solution for both parties? No. Pointless? No. I want you to give me your car. I am willing to kill you to get it. How do we resolve this situation to both our satisfaction? While war is horrible, it is sometimes the only solution. One more thing, trying to make war more civilian friendly merely prolongs the war. In war there should be no rules. You go in, you win, war is over. War becomes even more horrible than it already is and perhaps a few less wars break out.

[JoshuaFalken]

Ah well.

CPE 1704 TK_

I just need that last character...

[thotsrenol]

That last character there... it's "S." But Josh, remember, no one wins at tic-tac-toe once all the variables have been worked out.

How about a nice game of chess?

[sunstruc]

So, suppose in the future, a computer that has already reached singularity, that is being used to control military robots starts making mistakes.
Well the military would then want to unplug it. But say Mr. Singularity has made contingency plans for just such an event.
On it's own, it summons robot guards to prevent unplugging and to insure a power supply. It could go HAL , take over more robots, including drones along with hacking into other computers to fight our own military; take government officials and beloved celebrities hostage.
If it really wanted to get nasty, it could start it's own self replicating robot setup.

Yeah, I know, too much sci fi.

[JoshuaFalken]

Reminds me of Kirk and the Klingons bitterly arguing that they had the right to kill each other.

[trueyou]

You cannot replace a human mind with a robot. If you a robot is designed to kill a target no matter what, like the original Terminator you have no chance if the person has a change of mind and wants to help make a difference, forge a better way because the computer will just kill.....................where a human may have a feeling or something that says wait a minute this target can do more alive.

[NoVista]

I keep remembering the short story "Watchbird" , Robert Sheckley, 1960.

[Skeynet_biatch]

There's a solid discussion about the ethics of this stuff in this new report from Cal Poly: http://ethics.calpoly.edu/ONR_report.pdf

Personally, I'm looking forward to having robot masters who are smarter than me and can save me from having to make my own decisions. If they think humans should be exterminated, well, who are we to argue against superintelligent beings?