Some Expert: “Killer Robots Pose Latest Militant Threat”
Writing by Evan Ackerman on Wednesday, 27 of February , 2008 at 5:12 am
You can blame Yahoo news for that headline, but the content of this article quotes Noel Sharkey, a professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield (the one in England) as arguing that the increasing availability, decreasing cost, and constantly improving features of consumer robotics makes it inevitable that extremist groups will start using them against military forces:
“The trouble is that we can’t really put the genie back in the bottle. 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 suggests that a small GPS-guided drone with an autopilot could be made for about $500. In 2006, Hezbollah flew Iranian-made UAVs over Israel, and used one with an explosives payload to ram an Israeli warship. Obviously, using UAVs and other robots as weapons isn’t impossible, but I might question how practical (and realistic) it will be in the near future considering the present effectiveness of relatively primitive terrorist and insurgent tactics. Sharkey will be giving a talk entitled “The Ethics of Autonomous Military Systems” to the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies in London this Wednesday.
[ RUSI ] VIA [ Yahoo News ]
Category: Military
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