Autonomous Robots, War Machines and Ethics.

Whew. It has been an interesting week. Working on another story in my Dreaming Universe setting while trying to drum up more free-lance work, but what really topped it off has to be an email I received regarding artificial intelligence and robotics.

Primarily, I am a technologist; since we live in a technological society, I can identify and extrapolate through logic where technology may lead us in the near and possibly far future. Yes I blend technology and mysticism in my Dreaming Universe setting, although I do know that a parsec is a measurement of distance (one parsec equals about 3.26 light-years) and not time…(zing!)

Back to the email, it seems one of the writers in my review group posed the question about robots being used in war. This is based on the reboot of Robo-Cop and the prevalence of drones in modern warfare; he wanted to know if I believed that robots would become common on the battlefield in the near future.

Firstly, yes they will become more prominent on the modern battlefield. Currently there are hosts of robots that are directly controlled by an operator in the military and with police forces. However, the actually question posed was do I think autonomous robots will become common on the battlefield. Again, the answer is yes. However, there is a caveat to that answer, once we open the Pandora’s Box of artificial intelligence and autonomy in war machines, we will have to face the ethical issues that come with it.

Isaac Asimov, one of the greatest sci-fi writers, thought on this subject back in the ‘40s, and developed his Three Laws of Robotics. You don’t know what they are? Here are the laws and their genesis.

The Three Laws of Robotics (often shortened to The Three Laws or Three Laws) are a set of rules devised by science fiction author Isaac Asimov. These rules, introduced in his 1942 short story "Runaround", were foreshadowed in earlier stories. The Three Laws are:

11)    A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

22)    A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

33)   A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

A pretty neat set of rules for autonomous entities created by humanity, whose sole purpose is to make human lives easier, (really do we need to make society any more sedentary?) however these laws come from an ideal society where humanity realized the dangers of robots.

Human society, regardless of the kumbayah mentality that many cling too, is one of struggle. Humanity in its storied million-year history has been engrossed in a brutal struggle for survival. In fact, we eliminated the last opposition to our dominance, the Neanderthal 30,000 years ago.

However, a human soldier, seeing a mother trying to save a child moving a firearm or ordinance off the child will recognize it for what it is and hold fire. A child running across the street towards during a firefight trying to find safety will usually not draw fire. Granted I am using Western soldiers as examples, as we know there are murderous men leading armies throughout the world that have no regards for any life that are the perceived enemy.

However, they are still human and we can bring those murderers to justice by trial for war crimes. But when a machine is ordered to assault a village, town or city, tasked with rooting out and destroying an enemy kills innocents, where is the justice for the victims? You can shut down the machine, take it off line, or reprogram it. How can you adequately hold it responsible for any atrocities it commits?

One option is holding the programmers responsible for the crime; however, I can see a legal defense for that. If the machine has some semblance of intelligence, it can be argued that the machine “choose” to proceed with its action, thus absolving the programmers or creators of any responsibility for the crime.

Looking at the news, we see protesters engaging in combat with security forces, with casualties on both sides, human on human combat. However, if the protestors in the Ukraine are facing a company of robots with the orders to disperse the dissidents, you create a unique dyad, where the death of one party will have ramifications for loved ones, but the loss of the other party is nil as the machine can be replaced by another unit in the arsenal.

The issue then becomes one of ethics. Is it ethical for a country with robots to engage in warfare with a country that does not have them? Is it ethical for the government in command of robots to use them to put down uprisings or even as police forces within their own borders? How can a robot be brought to trial for the murder of a human? Is a robot killing of a human being even murder?

Murder is defined as the unlawful killing, with malicious intent, of another human; the premeditation distinguishes murder from manslaughter.

How can a robot have malicious intent? Even if there is a highly developed artificial intelligence algorithm used by the robot, as a society we would have to admit that the robot and its AI are equal to humans, thus opening a new series of issues regarding the use and equality of robotic entities.

I have barely touched on the potential issues that will face humanity once robots become more active and begin to gain autonomy in their actions. Sadly, I don’t see the world adopting any meaningful set of standard rules like Asimov described. I do see a new arms race with more and more intelligent machines as countries try to keep ahead of the curve, but as that happens inevitably we will reach the tipping point, and machines may decide that the whole problem with the world is simply humans.