The results were totally clear cut with an overwhelming 76% of engineers voting that there should be an unequivocal ban on developing ‘killer robots’.

The next-largest group, 14 per cent, had a similar view. They voted that attack logisitics could be autonomous as long as target selection remained under human control.

Ron Arkin from GIT was specifically mentioned in the poll. He has long opposed our call for a ban and has said that we should have a moratorium on autonomous weapons while control systems are being perfected. The engineers were not impressed – only 3% voted in his favour.

The other two options: autonomy for all systems other than weapons, or for armed forces being unwilling to adopt unmanned armed systems, failed to get more than 5 per cent of the vote. We would not mind autonomy for all systems other than weapons but feel happier that we got a resounding YES from The Engineer for our campaign. THANK YOU!

Read the full story in The Engineer

Latiff and McCloskey point out the military benefits of the autonomous machines and then comes the but…

The problem is that robotic weapons eventually will make kill decisions on the battlefield with no more than a veneer of human control. Full lethal autonomy is no mere next step in military strategy: It will be the crossing of a moral Rubicon. Ceding godlike powers to robots reduces human beings to things with no more intrinsic value than any object.

When robots rule warfare, utterly without empathy or compassion, humans retain less intrinsic worth than a toaster—which at least can be used for spare parts. In civilized societies, even our enemies possess inherent worth and are considered persons, a recognition that forms the basis of the Geneva Conventions and rules of military engagement.

Lethal autonomy also has grave implications for democratic society. The rule of law and human rights depend on an institutional and cultural cherishing of every individual regardless of utilitarian benefit. The 20th century became a graveyard for nihilistic ideologies that treated citizens as human fuel and fodder.

They speak very frankly about the recent US department of defense directive:

The kill decision is still subject to many layers of human command, and the U.S. Defense Department recently issued a directive stating that emerging autonomous weapons “shall be designed to allow commanders and operators to exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force.”

Yet this seems more like wishful thinking than realistic doctrine. Military budget cuts are making robotic autonomy almost fiscally inevitable.

There is a solid criticism of Michael N. Schmitt’s (Chairman of the US Naval War College International Law Department) view that war machines can protect civilian and property as well as humans. “This assurance aside, it is far from clear whether robots can be programmed to distinguish between large children and small adults, and in general between combatants and civilians, especially in urban conflicts. Surely death by algorithm is the ultimate indignity.”

The conclusion of the article is strongly in line with the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots:

Time is running out for military decision makers, politicians and the public to set parameters for research and deployment that could form the basis for national policy and international treaties. The alternative is to blindly accept as inevitable whatever technology offers. Let’s not be robotic in our acquiescence.

Read the full article – With drone warfare, America approaches the Robot-rubicon

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.

“Obama administration officials told CNN that the United States is concerned with Iranian intentions in incidents like this and whether such episodes could unintentionally trigger hostilities.”

This is just the kind of confrontation that ICRAC members have warned about happening when autonomous drones are deployed in the near future – drones that once launched will complete their mission without further intervention.

Without a human in the control loop to accept or issue warnings misunderstanding between software systems could lead to inadvertent armed confrontations that could trigger unintended large scale hostilities.

Russian Today: Medal of Droner

Now CNN has reported that Panetta’s successor, Chuck Hagel who has two purple hearts, has set up a review that will most likely lower the medal’s ranking. Read the CNN story - Hagel ordering review of new drone medal ranking

“Much of the conversation about the impact of these strikes has rightly focused on the moral and legal costs of these civilian casualties, but it is a mistake to judge the impact of the U.S. drone program only by the number of sorties or kills. When this is the sole basis for evaluation, it is easy to argue that there is nothing particularly unique about this form of warfare – that these people would have been targeted and killed by U.S. Special Forces or manned aircraft had the drone program not been in place.

But this type of analysis misses a defining characteristic of the drone program that makes it qualitatively different from the less sophisticated weaponry that it is replacing: Ubiquitous drone use blurs the line between citizen and militants.

The psychological impact of drone surveillance, when combined with the civilian casualties we already know occur during strikes, leads to significant negative strategic costs that need to be incorporated into our assessment of the drone program.”

The author, Taylor Owen, extensively uses the report Living Under Drones, by our friends at Stanford and NYU law and commissioned by Reprieve. But he adds new insights about the psychological trauma in Gaza – anticipatory anxiety keeps people from attending social gatherings such as weddings and funerals. This message cannot be repeated enough

Owen talks about the New York Times Journalist, David Rohde, who was kidnapped by the Taliban:

“David Rohde described both the fear the drones inspired among his captors, as well as among ordinary civilians: “The drones were terrifying. From the ground, it is impossible to determine who or what they are tracking as they circle overhead. The buzz of a distant propeller is a constant reminder of imminent death.”

Read the full article – Drones don’t just kill. Their psychological effects are creating enemies

Say No To Killer Robots

“This is a call to engineers to stand up and demand the prohibition of autonomous lethal targeting by robots. I ask this of engineers because you are the ones who know just how limited machines can be when it comes to making judgments; judgments that only humans should make; judgments about who to kill and when to kill them.”

The aim was to raise awareness of the issues within the engineering community that will be responsible for the development of lethal robots. There are many people with integrity in this community who care deeply about issues involving the killing of innocent civilians. But they might not aware that the artifacts they are working on could be used as autonomous weapons.

“The bottom line is that weapon systems should not be allowed to make decisions to select human targets and engage them with lethal force. We need to act now to stop the kill function from being automated. We have already prohibited chemical weapons, biological weapons, blinding lasers, cluster munitions and antipersonnel landmines.

We now need a new international treaty to pre-emptively ban fully autonomous weapons.

I call on you to sign our call for a ban at http://icrac.net/ before too many countries develop the technology and we venture down a path from which there is no return.”

ICRAC also calls for the same commitment from Computer Scientists, roboticists and professionals from related computing and engineering disciplines.

Read the full story – Say no to killer robots

The article talks about one bungled attempt to put a tracking device on the suitcase of a woman to become al-Aulaqi’s third wife:

“In its most exotic effort to track the cleric, the C.I.A. worked with Danish intelligence to use Morten Storm, a Danish convert who had befriended Mr. Awlaki, to put a tracking device on the suitcase of a woman who had agreed to become the cleric’s third wife. The plan failed when Mr. Awlaki’s wary associates discarded the suitcase. But Mr. Storm also told the authorities that he communicated with Mr. Awlaki via a courier; it is not clear whether that courier eventually helped lead the C.I.A. to Mr. Awlaki’s location.”

This is the most detailed article that I have read on the legal twists and turns involved and on how fragile the intelligence gathering is. It relies on some very unreliable sources and that is why it is so prone to error.

The killing of al-Awlaki’s 16 year old son is a good example. Born in Denver, al-Awlaki junior had no interest in terrorist activity. He was a normal US teenager who updated his Facebook page regularly.

“Then, on Oct. 14, a missile apparently intended for an Egyptian Qaeda operative, Ibrahim al-Banna, hit a modest outdoor eating place in Shabwa. The intelligence was bad: Mr. Banna was not there, and among about a dozen men killed was the young Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who had no connection to terrorism and would never have been deliberately targeted.

It was a tragic error and, for the Obama administration, a public relations disaster, further muddying the moral clarity of the previous strike on his father and fueling skepticism about American assertions of drones’ surgical precision. The damage was only compounded when anonymous officials at first gave the younger Mr. Awlaki’s age as 21, prompting his grieving family to make public his birth certificate.

He had been born in Denver, said the certificate from the Colorado health department. In the United States, at the time his government’s missile killed him, the teenager would have just reached driving age.”

This example shows clearly how the alleged incredible accuracy of the new drone weapons leads to the amplification of wrong decisions. They can precisely and surgically kill the wrong people.

It is well worth reading the full article 5 page article: How a U.S. Citizen Came to Be in America’s Cross Hairs

It is still not clear what that job is going to be for. The UK don’t even own predators. We don’t know who is going to fly these. Will it be US Air Force pilots or will they be for covert drone strikes in Africa?

Read the full Mail on Sunday story here - US Drones bombing Africa operated from RAF bases in the heart of the Lincolnshire countryside