Noel Sharkey, a professor at the University of Sheffield, warned conference attendees today about the danger of an arms race in robotic warfare.

He gave a keynote speech at the “Ethics of Autonomous Military Systems” event hold at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) for Defence and Security Studies, warning the audience about terroristic aspects of war robots. He argues that terrorists will use these robots for their purposes:

“Once the new weapons are out there, they will be fairly easy to copy. How long is it go­ing to be be­fore the ter­ror­ists get in on the ac­t? [...] With the cur­rent prices of ro­bot con­struc­tion fall­ing dra­mat­ic­ally and the avail­abil­ity of read­y-made com­po­nents for the am­a­teur mar­ket, it would­n’t re­quire a lot of skill to make au­ton­o­mous ro­bot weapons.” Sharkey said a small GPS-guided drone with au­to­pi­lot can be made for about $500.

Interestingly, he accounts the dumbness of these robots for part of the potential danger, because the robots might not be able to distinguish between friend or foe.

Military technology expert James Canton compared the development of robot war technologies with Moore’s Law, but “on steroids.” It is only a matter of time before the human factor is completely removed from the control of war robots. For now, the trigger has still to be pulled manually, as the control logic is not yet good enough and ethical questions still have to be answered.

However, discussing the morality and ethicality of warfare is hypocritical anyway, and has rarely stopped the use and development of military equipment (with the notable exception of biological and chemical weapons). Now as semi-automatic robots are used in real-”life” already, I doubt that a noticeable opposition will be formed, especially as the effects and danger of these weapons are not directly visible — on the contrary, the accuracy will improve and friendly fire is likely to reduce. I think only a mayor accident will be enough to change the perception of these robots, but then it is already too late. As soon as the technology is out there, it is available to be used by terrorist organisations.

While terrorist attacks are not directly related to AI, the development of autonomous robots is. Many research institutes and universities are striving towards automated image recognition, which is the major hurdle for the development of fully autonomous war robots, as the Geneva Convention requires the reliable distinction between combatants and civilians. Warnings from Experts like Noel Sharkey indicate the reality of the danger of autonomous war robots, which is why the AI Panic Level will be increased by +5%.

[Sources: AFP, World Science, The Register]

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