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.
