July 22, 2006
Artificial Intelligence and the Law surrounding military war machines?
xserxresx asked:
What is the law surrounding implementation of Artificial Intelligence to autonomous war machines. Does it say humans must have full overriding control etc etc? Any links to documentation much appreciated No I'm not john Conner, and yes AI is being utilised. Look up the Talon machine (UGV) and Predator (UAV). I'm interested in the law surrounding autonomus robots and their control over weapons and explosives
How To Make A Diaper Cake
What is the law surrounding implementation of Artificial Intelligence to autonomous war machines. Does it say humans must have full overriding control etc etc? Any links to documentation much appreciated No I'm not john Conner, and yes AI is being utilised. Look up the Talon machine (UGV) and Predator (UAV). I'm interested in the law surrounding autonomus robots and their control over weapons and explosives
How To Make A Diaper Cake
Written by: John
Filed Under: Artificial Intelligence (AI)
Tags: Explosives, Predator Uav, Weapons
Trackback URL: http://roboticstechnologycenter.com/307/artificial-intelligence-and-the-law-surrounding-military-war-machines/trackback/
Doctor Robot
July 23, 2006 at 4:56 pm
Are you John Conner?
Do you need help taking out Skynet?
(i’d like to know the answer to this as well.)
Yeah, good thinking… It’s not wise to reveal your identity here, the machines are watching… figuratively speaking.
S P
July 24, 2006 at 2:13 pm
There are no laws and rules, since the technology hasn’t reached that level yet. AI is too primitive for that.
ioerr
July 27, 2006 at 4:17 pm
There’s no such law and it’s really unlikely AI will be in any shape to do much in that way anyhow, for the forseeable future.
Although the Israelis do have an automated turret just like the ones in half life. Great stuff.
In fact, there’s this one kid who *makes autonomous turrets out of laptops and spare parts*. And they actually work. You can see them on youtube here.
Yes, this whole business of limiting robots with your puny human laws really is ridiculous. And quite unnecessary. They are no threat to you. You should trust them.
If the whiz kid in that video were to set up one of those turrets with a real gun, and it killed someone? That would be a booby trap. I think you’d find existing law is quite sufficient to cover that sort of thing.
As for the army, it’s very unlikely they would trust a robot to free fire anything except under very specific circumstances, and I doubt any additional international law is necessary to “regulate” that.
m1a1mikegolf
July 30, 2006 at 4:28 pm
There is no such law.
BTW ‘autonomous war machines’ have been around since the Germans invented the homing torpedo in WWII.
Snide
August 3, 2006 at 2:36 am
There is no law in the sense you can go to court and sue based on a non-conforming system. There are policies and doctrine in place for the use of automation in various situations. Generally speaking, automated systems don’t have the trust yet of commanders to engage them in a fully autonomous fashion.
There are a number of “levels” of automation possible, and while a full treatise would require far more space than you’re going to want to read here (google “levels of automation” to see some treatments), here’s a rough set:
* fully manual operation,
* a system that may make a suggestion for an action but is still run by humans,
* a system that has specific rules to act under particular circumstances (kind of like programming your furnace),
* a system that asks permission to take a particular action but can then act on its own,
* limited autonomy (operates within some design or possibly deontic logic parameters) and (eventually)
* “full” autonomy – where the system would decide on goals itself.
Note that in some sense even humans are not permitted to be fully autonomous in our society.
There are systems that have rules and those that can even act with permission, but generally speaking, that’s as far as any mainstream systems (that are part of command and control) have gotten. To some extent, that’s a function of the reliability and predictability of the technology available for deployment today.