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Peter Singer, who has authored books
on the military, warned that while using robots for battle saves
lives of military personnel, the move has the potential to
exacerbate warfare by having heartless machines do the dirty
work.
“We are at a point of revolution in war, like the invention of
the atomic bomb,” Singer said.
“What does it mean to go to war with US soldiers whose hardware
is made in China and whose software is made in India?"
Singer predicts that US military units will be half machine,
half human by 2015.
The US Army already recruits soldiers using a custom war
videogame, and some real-world weapon controls copy designs of
controllers for popular videogame consoles.
Attack drones and bomb-handling robots are already common in
battle zones.
Robots not only have no compassion or mercy, they insulate
living soldiers from horrors that humans might be moved to
avoid.
“The United States is ahead in military robots, but in
technology there is no such thing as a permanent advantage,”
Singer said. “You have Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran working
on military robots."
There is a “disturbing” cross between robotics and terrorism,
according to Singer, who told of a website that lets visitors
detonate improvised explosive devices from home computers.
“You don’t have to convince robots they are going to get 72
virgins when they die to get them to blow themselves up,” Singer
said.
Robots also record everything they see with built-in cameras,
generating digital video that routinely gets posted online at
YouTube in graphic clips that soldiers refer to as “war porn,”
according to Singer.
“It turns war into entertainment, sometimes set to music,”
Singer said. “The ability to watch more but experience less."
Robotics designer David Hanson offered hope when it comes to
making robots a little more human.
Hanson builds robots that have synthetic flesh faces and read
people’s expressions in order to copy expressions.
“The goal here is not just to achieve sentience, but empathy,”
Hanson said.
“As machines are more capable of killing, implanting empathy
could be the seeds of hope for our future."
Hanson demonstrated a lifelike robotic bust of late genius
Albert Einstein that makes eye contact and mimics people’s
expressions.
“I smiled at that thing and jumped out of my skin when it smiled
back,” TED curator Chris Anderson quipped. “It’s freaky."
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