Gigaom AI Minute – January 20

Transcript

Technology has changed the face of warfare dozens of times in the past few thousands of years. Metallurgy, the horse, the chariot, gunpowder, the stirrup, artillery, planes, atomic weapons, and computers each had a major impact on how we slaughtered each other. Robots and AI will change it again. Should we build weapons systems that can make autonomous kill decisions based on factors programmed in the robots?

Proponents maintain that the robots may reduce the number of civilian deaths since the robots will follow protocol exactly. In a split second, a soldier, subjected to fatigue or fear, can make a literally fatal mistake. To a robot, however, a split second is all they ever need.

This may well be true, but it is not the primary motivation of the militaries of the world to adopt robots with artificial intelligence. There are three reasons these weapons are compelling to them. First, they will be more effective at their mission than human soldiers. Second, there's a fear that potential adversaries are developing the technologies. And third, they'll reduce the casualties of the militaries that deploy them. This last one has a chilling side effect. It could make warfare more common by lowering the political costs of it.

The central issue at present is whether or not a machine should be allowed to independently decide to kill someone or to spare someone. I'm not being overly dramatic when I say the decision at hand is whether or not we should build killer robots. There is not "can we" involved; no one doubts that we can. The question is, "Should we?"