For the ban, he notes that

The arguments against developing fully autonomous weapons, as they are called, range from moral (“they are evil”) to technical (“they will never be that smart”) to visceral (“they are creepy”).

“This is something people seem to feel at a very gut level is wrong,” says Stephen Goose, director of the arms division of Human Rights Watch, which has assumed a leading role in challenging the dehumanizing of warfare. “The ugh factor comes through really strong.”

He then discusses the three International Humanitarian issues with autonomous robot weapons (i) inability to conform to the principle of distinction; (ii) inability to conform to the principle of Proportionality and (iii) difficulties with accountability with mishaps or war crimes.

He brings out the usual suspect, Ron Arkin, to argue against a ban. Arkin still believes that robots could do better than human because they don’t have emotional responses. Others argue that that is one of the main problems. The funniest comment to Keller’s article was a response to Ron Arkin:

Professor Arkin argues that automation can also make war more humane.” This guy has obviously been a civilian all his life. Only a civilian would believe there is a humane way to kill another human being. Does he get out of the house on a regular basis?

But Arkin’s position in other respects does not now seem that removed from those calling for a ban. “He advocates a moratorium on deployment and a full-blown discussion of ways to keep humans in charge.” The human’s in charge is a subtle change in Arkin’s position that is greatly appreciated. It moves us some way toward the discussions that should be had.

However, without a ban on the development and research on these weapons systems, they are going to end up in the US arsenal. Other countries have not said that they will have a moratorium and so we can expect and arms race that the US will not be able to resist.

In fact in terms of a moratorium, Keller appears to have made an error of interpretation with regards to the recent Department of Defence directive (November 21 2012) ” Last November the Defense Department issued what amounts to a 10-year moratorium on developing them while it discusses the ethical implications and possible safeguards.”

ICRAC member Mark Gubrud picks up on this error in a comment after Keller’s piece:

The DoD Directive (3000.09) does not impose any moratorium. It says that the United States will develop and use autonomous weapons.

Although it draws a line at AW that kill humans autonomously, it does not forbid crossing the line; rather, it sets forth the procedure for doing so. Four sub-cabinet level signatures are required. Other than that, the rules for AW that kill humans are essentially the same as for AW that target materiel, which the Directive approves already.

The directive also approves for immediate development and use “semi-autonomous weapons” which may automatically acquire, track, identify and prioritize potential targets, cue a human operator to their presence, and upon approval, engage them, automatically determining the timing of when to fire.

So, a semi-autonomous weapon system might detect a group of persons, highlight their dim outlines on a screen, and say to the operator “target group identified.” The operator says “engage” and the machine kills them.

Such a system already has every capability needed for full lethal autonomy. It has only been programmed to request approval. One trivial software modification will fix that, if the system doesn’t already have a switch to throw it into full autonomous mode.

DoDD 3000.09 approves such systems for immediate development, acquistion and use.

There is no moratorium; it is a full-speed charge into the unknown.

Nonetheless, Keller is clearly on the right side of the issues and shows a clear understanding: ” It’s a squishy directive, likely to be cast aside in a minute if we learn that China has sold autonomous weapons to Iran”

Although Keller is not optimistic about the chance of us getting a ban on killer robots, he supports it and ICRAC appreciates him for that:

I don’t hold out a lot of hope for an enforceable ban on death-dealing robots, but I’d love to be proved wrong. If war is made to seem impersonal and safe, about as morally consequential as a video game, I worry that autonomous weapons deplete our humanity. As unsettling as the idea of robots’ becoming more like humans is the prospect that, in the process, we become more like robots.

It is well worth reading Bill Keller’s full story and the comments that come afterwards – Smart Robots.

From the Observer:
“Killer robots must be stopped, say campaigners

A new global campaign to persuade nations to ban “killer robots” before they reach the production stage is to be launched in the UK by a group of academics, pressure groups and Nobel peace prize laureates.

Robot warfare and autonomous weapons, the next step from unmanned drones, are already being worked on by scientists and will be available within the decade, said Dr Noel Sharkey, a leading robotics and artificial intelligence expert and professor at Sheffield University. He believes that development of the weapons is taking place in an effectively unregulated environment, with little attention being paid to moral implications and international law.

The Stop the Killer Robots campaign will be launched in April at the House of Commons and includes many of the groups that successfully campaigned to have international action taken against cluster bombs and landmines. They hope to get a similar global treaty against autonomous weapons.”

Read the full story in the Observer

This was also picked up by the Independent and Wired Magazine

The UK Tabloids were also in on the act: The Sun, The Daily Mail and the Daily Mail again and The Daily Star

There are too many news reports around the world to list but here are two quality ones from Norway
and The Netherlands

I will try to get time to give a full media report later.

Here is my response on the relationship between these two documents in the Guardian Newspaper, December 2012. The article has links to both the Human Rights Watch report and the Department of Defence directive.

Pressure will grow for armies to automate their robots if only so machines can shoot before being shot, says Jürgen Altmann of the Technical University of Dortmund, in Germany, and a founder of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control [...].

The full text article can be found here.

Noel Sharkey, professor of robotics and artificial intelligence at Sheffield University, told the Royal Society meeting there are credible estimates that one in three casualties from drone attacks is a civilian. His chief anxiety is the development of “autonomous targeting”, where unmanned planes are engineered to lock automatically onto what their onboard computers identify as the enemy.

The full text article can be found here.

As quickly as countries build these systems, they want to deploy them, says Noel Sharkey, a professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield in England: “There’s been absolutely no international discussion. It’s all going forward without anyone talking to one another.”

The full text can be found here.

… says it is impossible for autonomous robots today to distinguish reliably between civilians and combatants, a cornerstone of international humanitarian law. He also believes robots lack the subtle judgment to adhere to another humanitarian law: the principle of proportionality which says civilian causalities must not be “excessive” for the military advantage gained.

“It’s not always appropriate to fire and kill,” Sharkey [explains]. “There are so many examples in the Iraq war where insurgents have been in an alleyway, marines have arrived with guns raised but noticed the insurgents were actually carrying a coffin. So the marines lower their machine guns, take off their helmets and let the insurgents pass. Now, a robot couldn’t make that kind of decision. What features does it look for? Could the box be carrying weapons?”

The full text of the article can be found here.

“We need a new treaty to limit proliferation. All the arms fairs now are selling UAVs. It’s naive to think they will remain in the hands of governments.”

The full text of the article can be found here. ICRAC’s Berlin Statement can be found here.

The full text – in German – of the article can be found here. ICRAC’s Berlin Statement can be found here.