TECHNOLOGY has long been distancing the soldiers who fire weapons from the people who get hit. Now robotics engineer at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, is trying to sever the link completely, with software that would allow drones to make their own decisions about wielding lethal force.
He has developed an 鈥渆thical governor鈥�, which aims to ensure that robot attack aircraft behave ethically in combat, and is demonstrating it in based on recent conflicts in Afghanistan and elsewhere.
In one scenario modelled on a situation in 2006, the drone identifies a group of Taliban soldiers inside a defined 鈥渒ill zone鈥�. But the drone doesn鈥檛 fire. Its maps show the group is inside a cemetery; opening fire would breach international law.
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In another scenario, the drone identifies an enemy vehicle convoy close to a hospital. Here the ethical governor only allows fire that will damage the vehicles without harming the hospital. Arkin has also built in a 鈥済uilt鈥� system which, if a serious error is made, forces a drone to start behaving more cautiously.
In developing the software, Arkin drew on studies of military ethics as well as discussions with soldiers, and says his aim is to reduce non-combatant casualties. One Vietnam veteran told him of soldiers shooting at anything that moved. 鈥淲e should be thinking about how to make robots perform better than that,鈥� says Arkin.
鈥淚n some cases, soldiers shoot anything that moves. We need to make robots perform better鈥�
Simulations are a powerful way to imagine the future of combat, says , a roboticist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. But they gloss over the difficulties of building robots that can understand the world enough to make such judgements, he says, something unlikely to be possible for decades.
The Georgia Tech group has also made a system that advises a soldier of the ethics of a mission as they program it into a drone. Such tools could be used much sooner, as similar systems already exist to help doctors with medical ethics.
