The Pentagon and other nations are quietly debating whether to allow AI-controlled drones to autonomously decide whether to kill humans on the battlefield.
According to The New York Times, the US, China, Israel and other nations are taking a serious look at AI drone warfare where drones would decide whether humans live or die.
Via The Times:
It seems like something out of science fiction: swarms of killer robots that hunt down targets on their own and are capable of flying in for the kill without any human signing off.
But it is approaching reality as the United States, China and a handful of other nations make rapid progress in developing and deploying new technology that has the potential to reshape the nature of warfare by turning life and death decisions over to autonomous drones equipped with artificial intelligence programs.
Whereas drones in the past have required a human to pull the trigger, autonomous drones would make decisions by using AI systems to process and analyze information.
While some nations argue autonomous “killer drone” usage should remain on the table, other UN member states are warning the issue could lead to an existential crisis for humanity.
The prime minister of Antigua and Barbuda, Gaston Browne, recently warned UN officials at a meeting, “This isn’t the plot of a dystopian novel, but a looming reality.”
The issue could have terrible consequences for humanity, said the Austrian Foreign Ministry Director of Arms Control.
“This is really one of the most significant inflection points for humanity,” Alexander Kmentt, Director of Arms Control at Austrian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told the Times. “What’s the role of human beings in the use of force — it’s an absolutely fundamental security issue, a legal issue and an ethical issue.”
The Times notes some Pentagon officials have already been advocating the use of drones in order to gain a tactical advantage on China.
“We’ll counter the PLA’s mass with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit, harder to beat,” stated Hicks.
US Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall also noted the time is coming where the world will have to adopt usage of the technology.
“Individual decisions versus not doing individual decisions is the difference between winning and losing — and you’re not going to lose,” Kendall said.
“I don’t think people we would be up against would do that, and it would give them a huge advantage if we put that limitation on ourselves.”
According to NewScientist.com, Ukraine has already started using AI-controlled drones in its war against Russia, using the killer robots to make tactical strikes without input from a human operator.
Mr. Kmentt says the time is approaching where we’ll have to decide to nip the new technology in the bud, or live in the nightmare dystopian sci-fi reality we’ve created.
“If we wait too long, we are really going to regret it,” he said. “As soon enough, it will be cheap, easily available, and it will be everywhere. And people are going to be asking: Why didn’t we act fast enough to try to put limits on it when we had a chance to?”
H/t: BusinessInsider.com