Elon Musk, the creator of Tesla and Space X, has become the number one folk hero of our times. Thanks to his fame everyone and their nanny have learned of his open letter1 to the United Nations, signed by 115 fellow leaders of robotics and AI companies. The champions of the industry – including Google, but not Facebook or Apple – urge the international community to ban the use of AI controlled weapon systems. They argue that killer robots could be deployed in the very near future, starting a revolution in warfare, leading to a global arms race and the destabilization of human societies.
‘Lethal autonomous weapons will permit armed conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales faster than humans can comprehend. We do not have long to act. Once this Pandora’s box is opened, it will be hard to close.’
Is Mr. Musk right to cry wolf, or is his pessimism borderline ridiculous as Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s CEO, suggests?2 And if Mr. Musk is right, is it possible to stop the coming revolution? Could our societies really go through such drastic changes as Mr. Musk’s pessimistic scenario predicts?
The military revolution is near…
Mr. Musk is definitely right when he points out that autonomous weapons are not science fiction any more. In fact, their building blocks have been around for almost half a century. To create the revolutionary ‘killer robot’, one only has to combine three existing capabilities. It has to be able to make decisions autonomously, maneuver independently, and use lethal force. Think, move and shoot. Militaries all over the world already widely deploy robots that can do two of the three.
Robot sentries, such as the Phalanx, have been around since 1973. Phalanx guns are very lethal and they can take decisions pretty well, too. During their four decades in service, these autonomous guns have only shot down one friendly airplane by accident. One has to doubt that human operators could have done any better than that.
Phalanx
Most present day aerial and ground drones (e.g. the US’s infamous ‘terrorist hunter’ Reaper aircraft or Russia’s new mini tank, the Uran-9) are just an evolution of a long line of remote controlled weapon systems in use since World War I. Sometime between 2005 and 2010, however, the Global Hawk spy drone appears to have started a new age. While this top secret platform is officially classified as a ‘semi-autonomous unmanned aerial vehicle’, it is widely believed that its actual capabilities include unsupervised flight to and from its designated area of operations as well as fully autonomous collection of information.
Reaper
Uran-9
Global Hawk
…and it cannot be stopped
Since 2015 American and Chinese researchers presented working swarm AIs in aerial drones and their Russian counterparts seem to be on the verge of transforming their previously remote controlled mini tanks into fully autonomous robot warriors. The technology is ready for the AI revolution, and autonomous weapon systems will most probably survive any upcoming legal challenges too.
As Dr. Kenneth Payne of King’s College reminds us3, it may be very much hopeless to try and ban a more active deployment of military AI. As Dr. Payne notes there is a huge incentive for potential users to cheat any future regulation, while it is incredibly difficult to detect illegal AI development.
‘AI is coming to war, regardless of Elon Musk’s well-meaning concern’
Historically, the international community has been unable to stop countries like Israel, Pakistan or North Korea from developing their very own (and illegal) arsenals of nuclear weapons. This does not bode well for a potential ban on military AIs, especially considering that detecting illegal AI development will be far more difficult than the identification of underground nuclear weapons projects.
Recommend Reading:
An open letter to the United Nations convention on certain conventional weapons. Future of Life. https://futureoflife.org/autonomous-weapons-open-letter-2017
Killer robots? Musk and Zuckerberg escalate row over dangers of AI. The Guardian.https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/25/elon-musk-mark-zuckerberg-artificial-intelligence-facebook-tesla
AI is coming to war, regardless of Elon Musk’s well-meaning concern. Independent. http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/robots-ai-war-elon-musk-regulation-coming-regardless-of-concern-a7906121.html
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