Autonomous Killer Robots More Ethical Than Human Soldiers

October 2nd, 2012

Oh sure.

Via: CBS News:

Drones could soon operate without the help of humans.

Agence France-Presse is reporting that the Pentagon wants its drones to be more autonomous, so that they can run with little to no assistance from people.

“Before they were blind, deaf and dumb,” Mark Maybury, chief scientist for the U.S. Air Force, told AFP. “Now we’re beginning to make them to see, hear and sense.”

Ronald Arkin, a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology, believes that drones will soon be able to kill enemies on their own independently.

“It is not my belief that an unmanned system will be able to be perfectly ethical in the battlefield, but I am convinced that they can perform more ethically than human soldiers are capable of,” Arkin told AFP.

Arkin added that robotic weapons should be designed as “ethical” warriors and that these type of robots could wage war in a more “humane” way.

Related: Living Under Drones

Posted in Rise of the Machines, Technology, War | Top Of Page

One Response to “Autonomous Killer Robots More Ethical Than Human Soldiers”

  1. LykeX says:
    October 8, 2012 at 6:59 pm

    >Arkin added that robotic weapons should be designed as “ethical” warriors and that these type of robots could wage war in a more “humane” way.

    Sure, but given who’s going to be programming them, how likely is that really?
    Even if their surface programming follows ethical guide-lines, any commander worth the title will have an over-ride inserted that’ll allow him to order the ‘bots to do whatever he says.

    Robots could be more ethical than us, but I don’t think we’ll let them.

Leave a Reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.