Robot Wars

Here is an interesting thought, should we have a debate in society about the ethics of using robots in warfare? Noel Sharkey of the University of Sheffield thinks we should (Sharkey holds the chair in the department of computer science at Sheffield). He thinks there are problems with the concept of people piloting unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from a bunker in Ohio that drop bombs on people in Pakistan, I can see his point this must seem like a video game from their perspective; I hope the psychological vetting process for those jobs is thorough!

There are many things to consider here, the main objections boil down to the fact that robots cannot easily distinguish friend from foe and by removing humans from the loop there is no proportionality. The first problem could conceivably be solved by technology, for example friendly troops could wear emitters of some kind, however the second problem is an order of magnitude more difficult to automate, and in fact I would go as far as to say that we are generations away from such automation. Proportionality means determining a reasonable amount of force to gain a military advantage, and is clearly wrapped up in the morality of individual human beings, it is unlikely something that requires such a corpus of life-experience could ever be codified. However it could also be argued that proportionality is not necessarily guaranteed even when humans are involved, the conflicts of the 20th century are particularly nasty examples of that.

Here is an interesting thought experiment, imagine if we ever progressed to the point where competing armies simply pitted their machines against each other and accepted the outcome; an advance on even the gladiatorial system in terms of reducing suffering. Imagine the effect of an arms race where there was no risk of harm to the participants, the intellectual advances might be amazing, transformers eat your heart out!