By: Markus Fabell

Markus Fabell — Tue, 30 Nov 1999 00:00:00 +0000

Autonomous sentry robots that shoot and kill on sight stationed at the borders of Korea and Israel, more than 12,000 war robots presently serving in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, funding for the US Future Combat System exceeding $230 billion ... Singer made some good points. But the problem in realistic situations is usually the time component: Go to war killing 1 innocent now to save 10 innocents over the next 5 years? What makes this devilish is the difficulty in accurately predicting the next 5 years. Using robots for combats will not improve our accuracy in predicting future outcomes. All it will do is reduce the costs of going to war (both, human/political and financial costs), and further desensitivize us to warfare (we've all experienced this from watching TV). Some good background material here: Gianmarco Veruggio - Roboethics Noel Sharkey - Robot Ethics (Part 1) Ronald Arkin - Robot Ethics (Part 2) (coming up)

Comments on: Twitter Snapshot: P.W. Singer on robots of war

By: Markus Fabell