Don't Let Robots Pull the Trigger

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dont-let-robots-pull-the-trigger/

by ohjeez • 7 years ago

47 63 7 years ago

scientificamerican.com

opwieurposiu• 7 years ago

Robots have been killing people by accident for years, soon we will find a way to turn this bug into a feature!

krisoft• 7 years ago

So how is a cruise missile not an autonomous weapon?

hutzlibu• 7 years ago

The cruise missile does not decide on its own, when to start. Humans do.

maxxxxx2• 7 years ago

It also doesn't decide the target.

v_lisivka3• 7 years ago

Mines and other kinds of death traps are primitive robots too.

johngalt• 7 years ago

Aren't 'killer robots' ethically similar to landmines? Only with better fire control systems.

Not saying that landmines are paragons of ethical weapon systems, but they are making a kill decison without a human being in the loop. Based on nothing more than a pressure plate or trip wire.

If we had landmines that could differentiate between a tank and a school bus wouldn't that be a step forward?

nkingsy• 7 years ago

https://www.un.org/disarmament/convarms/landmines/

"The ensuing Mine Ban Convention has been joined by three-quarters of the world’s countries. Since its inception more than a decade ago, it has led to a virtual halt in global production of anti-personnel mines, and a drastic reduction in their deployment. More than 40 million stockpiled mines have been destroyed, and assistance has been provided to survivors and populations living in the affected areas."

I think the ideas is nip this one in the bud before it gets there.

GauntletWizard• 7 years ago

Yes. Autonomous weapons systems don't make much sense on patrol for a long time, but as area-denial systems, they're already past viable and it's surprising they're not deployed.

I think there is a big argument to be made for their ethicality over landmines: unlike landmines, they are easy to deactivate and can be made highly visible while remaining effective. I don't think this makes them ethical, but I do believe that we have to consider how that changes their potential uses. There's an argument that it's far safer if we have hard rules around certain areas - "Enter a 500m radius around this military base moving more than 5mph and you will be shot many times" - than if we have fuzzy ones around guards and schedules. Certainties are often better than including a fuzzy human in the loop, which is why electrical installers all put their own lock on the switch rather than assigning a coordinator.

philwelch5• 7 years ago

Arms control treaties are always vaguely pointless in the sense that countries will either leave or violate them the moment they are no longer within their interest. The biggest example of this is probably the Washington and London naval treaties of the 1920's and 1930's. The only real exception so far seems to be nuclear arms control treaties, which (a) mostly entrench the existing nuclear powers in a position of military hegemony over the rest of the world and (b) don't really stop anyone from having the weapons.

Landmine bans in particular are kind of ridiculous because of how easy it is to build and plant IED's.

bgee• 7 years ago

Interesting that you brought up this treaty because I believe none of China, Russia or US has signed it...

[0] http://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/mine_ban

jandrewrogers• 7 years ago

Sophisticated landmines do have decent target discriminators to reduce false positives with respect to the targets they are intended for.

v_lisivka3• 7 years ago

I.e. they are more effective against humans.

empath75• 7 years ago

A robot is just a more complicated fuse.

function_seven• 7 years ago

A fuse can't make a decision to light itself.

Varcht3• 7 years ago

Some weapon systems arm themselves according to certain conditions, altitude, time from launch, etc. I think one could argue that some missile systems are already robots that "pull the trigger".

goldenshale• 7 years ago

I think the authors are 100% right on everything, but they failed to bring up one of the most important factors that I believe is driving US policy in this area: if Russian or Chinese weapons are automatically firing at the speed of a neural network while our weapons are waiting for meatware actuation then it's going to be a short battle.

binarymax2• 7 years ago

Similar to chemical warfare. There needs to be a UN resolution to ban these types of weapons. Make it so use of them constitutes war crimes.

philwelch5• 7 years ago

Chemical weapons aren't used because they're not worth the risk. There was virtually zero battlefield use of chemical weapons in the Second World War, which was otherwise as "no holds barred" as you can imagine.

Datenstrom3• 7 years ago

A large issue with this is that like the DARPA ALIAS project[1], and another project which I do not have a reference to but saw a demonstration of last year which made a traditional helicopter autonomous with just a bolt on avionics box, it is entirely possible to have "manned" systems that are made autonomous with a bolt on. This means that any country could develop autonomous warfare systems entirely in secret and then convert everything to unmanned overnight just before an attack.

You can't see software.

[1] http://www.aurora.aero/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/ALIAS-Broc...

Edit, found a reference for the autonomous helicopter:

https://www.navy.mil/submit/display.asp?story_id=103769

Datenstrom3• 7 years ago

Yes, the fact that these systems will be built by someone regardless needs to be addressed unless we want to become the equivalent of redcoats lining up in neat rows to fight people who are not playing by the rules.

xoa• 7 years ago

if Russian or Chinese weapons are automatically firing at the speed of a neural network while our weapons are waiting for meatware actuation then it's going to be a short battle.

While I see your point on the ever present escalation risk in these things, are you sure you're not taking an overly restrictive view of "pull the trigger"? Take long existing weapons like just plain old guided missiles. In one respect it could be argued a computer system is making the kill choice there, after firing there will be a long period where the computer is seeking the target and the computer is what actually detonates the warhead that makes the kill. But in practice it's hard to argue that a human isn't still "pulling the trigger", making the decision that "this target should be killed" and then the level of intelligence the weapon employs to accomplish that order afterwards isn't so relevant. The real comfort factor seems come from there being inherent limits in terms of time/space (a missile only has so much run time and range) and specificity (a missile is going after a specific designated target).

If we consider the most problematic weapons of modern history, I think the real uniting factor is when they get away from all those limits at once. Landmines can linger a long time and activate indiscriminately without further human intervention. Chemical and bioweapons also not well controlled in terms of time, space or specificity despite no AI. Project Pluto, the early Cold War R&D by the US military to create a hypersonic nuclear scramjet cruise "missile" (more of a autonomous bomber) that could be launched then linger flying over the ocean for months (due to nuclear reactor power) was abandoned precisely because it was considered far too destabilizing even for then. Despite still being a "missile", the longer time/space/area effect made a difference. Heck, even cluster munitions on conventional missiles, while not considered in the same category as landmines exactly, are still pretty hotly debated.

By the same token in a future conflict with more advanced NN/ML weapons, isn't there still room for operator decisions? Ie., "here are cryptographically authenticated orders to kill targets matching X profile within Y geographic area for Z time period". It would seem like setting international restrictions on X, Y and Z there (requirements for safety interlocks and for any given kill authorization to be valid for no more then 20 minutes over no more then 400 km^2 to toss something out) could be a viable approach. So in the specific minutes and seconds and milliseconds of machine/machine conflict there'd be no disadvantage, but humans would still be need to be constantly "involved" at a higher level. Having killbots just roaming around or lying in wait (and potentially lasting after the conflict is totally over, ala landmines) would be banned, but sending robot tanks to attack a specific fortified position on one single day with active strategic direction would not be.

Basically moving humanity "up the chain" a bit seems like something countries could practically agree to without feeling massively behind and could be monitored/verified.

Edit: updated to add some comparison to non-AI weapon systems that have been agreed to be restricted with some success.

decebalus1• 7 years ago

this just proves we haven't learned anything from the nuclear arms race.

PavlovsCat• 7 years ago

The line isn't between Russians and Chinese and American citizens, it's between the power centers within them and the citizens in their own countries as well as the others, and these power centers will be more loyal to each other than the respective populations they "represent" when it's time to consent and pay taxes for something, but which they don't know at all when it comes to dissidence or poverty. Robots firing at robots or soldiers isn't going to the end result, robots firing at civilians is.

IMO the closing window of opportunity, that is, the fleeting opportunity that still exist, would be a culture of intellectual honesty and getting rid of moral double standards rather than goosestepping, so maybe people in Russia, China and elsewhere might think hey, maybe we'd actually like to be free, too. But, instead let's just play another round of this game. Remember the cold war, how giant that was, yet when it ended, the military budget just stayed as big? It's a racket.

alkonaut3• 7 years ago

That’s why it needs to be a treaty. There needs to be an understanding that it’s as unacceptable as biological warfare and that the gloves are off once they are used.

No one will use autonomous fire in some backwater proxy war skirmish (which is where superpowers meet) if the response would be the same as it would be to a nuclear first strike.

i_am_proteus2• 7 years ago

Even in a controlled testing environment, it would be difficult to distinguish the signature of an autonomous weapon system from a remote-controlled unmanned system.

On the battlefield, it will be impossible.

The only difference between a system with a human firebreak and a fully autonomous weapon is the flip of a bit.

Treaties will not be effective at preventing the development of these weapons. Any illusions will be shattered by the first bad actor.

An arms race in this space is inevitable; realistically it has already begun.

Recurecur2• 7 years ago

There needs to be an understanding that it’s as unacceptable as biological warfare

Are you under the impression that the major powers don't have biological warfare capabilities?

and that the gloves are off once they are used.

So, China uses autonomous killbots in Tibet to control an uprising. The US "takes its gloves off", and...sends a strongly worded letter? Sends the world economy into a freefall?

Further, China and Russia could do some limited testing, and then stockpile millions of killbots/killdrones. Once the gloves have already "come off", they can then rule the battlefield, since their opponent(s) won't have a similar massive force.

I think the combination of cheap and effective will be impossible for the less scrupulous countries to resist...and possibly the more scrupulous countries as well.

It is also a slippery slope - the US is already working on autonomous anti-ship cruise missiles that search an area and look for the correct ship (think "Chinese aircraft carrier"). That implicitly means the missile will autonomously "decide" which ship containing hundreds or thousands of sailors gets hit. Full autonomy will also be a requirement for any effective UCAS capability.

I expect that regardless of what treaty is signed, the various powers will make sure there are loopholes permitting what they wish to do - or they will simply ignore the treaty. A concrete example of such behavior is Russia's long-term violations of the INF Treaty.

lewiscollard2• 7 years ago

My concern about autonomous robot warfare is not that it will shoot the wrong people or go out of control; that's easily answered by "but this one won't", and there's no counter-argument which will not look like pure assertion.

My concern is that they will work just fine: this would bring the domestic costs of warfare to near-zero (the cost of the robot weapons). For those of us that are sceptical of military adventurism, just consider how much more willing our politicians would be to invade some random, relatively harmless country if there were no "boots on the ground" and no possibility of body bags coming home.

philwelch5• 7 years ago

The long, relative peace on the Korean peninsula has persisted despite a massive manpower advantage by the North. The presence of hard defensive positions augmented by landmines and autonomous sentry guns allows South Korea to deter Northern aggression without having to keep up with North Korea's punishing and impoverishing level of military spending.

Like any weapon, robotic weapons are only a problem if you use them for evil.

dsfyu404ed4• 7 years ago

The presence of hard defensive positions augmented by landmines and autonomous sentry guns allows South Korea to deter Northern aggression without having to keep up with North Korea's punishing and impoverishing level of military spending.

And the presence of plenty of artillery pointed at Seoul has prevented anyone who doesn't want to see Seoul leveled as a result of their actions from taking aggressive action against North Korea. Knowing that if you do anything bad you will get whacked hard enough that it's not worth it is a powerful deterrent.

Like any weapon, robotic weapons are only a problem if you use them for evil.

Because of the inherent defensive bias of the technology (stationary is easier than mobile, defending a known area is easier than entering an new area and figuring out what to shoot) robotic weapons are a bigger problem for those seeking to do or enable evil.

cr0sh• 7 years ago

My concern is that they will work just fine: this would bring the domestic costs of warfare to near-zero

As an adjunct viewpoint to this - what happens when such weapons are available to regular people?

In theory, that's possible today; witness the number of instructables and other similar projects detailing how to create a nerf or paintball automated tracking gun system. It wouldn't take much to upgrade that to mount it on a decent mobile platform with a real weapon.

Right now, the objective or use-case for such a device isn't clear, so we haven't seen criminals build or use them, beyond perhaps drug trafficking via consumer drones and similar.

I'm sure, though, that it is going to be a problem in the future...

philipkglass• 7 years ago

I'm pretty sure that some criminals will use such devices in the future.

I'm also pretty sure that criminal use is going to be rare.

There doesn't seem to be a very large overlap between willingness to commit violent crime and the technical competency to turn off-the-shelf consumer products into weapons. Why do terrorists stab people with knives when they could make explosives from household materials instead? They're clearly violent and unafraid of death. My interpretation: they lack the necessary knowledge to make explosives, aren't capable of self-learning either, and settle for a vastly inferior but readily available knife. Even organized crime seems to use explosives rather rarely, and even then diverted/stolen commercial ones more often than DIY.

munificent• 7 years ago

I think you're exactly right.

A key check on military abuse in a democracy is that military actions kill some fraction of voters. We have already seen that as that fraction goes down through better soldier protection technology, our willingness to go into battle increases. If we drive that down to near-zero, the implications are frightening.

A further consequence of this is that the fewer human soldiers you have in the field, the fewer embedded journalists you have. And, without those, it is even easier to conduct military actions without any oversight from voters.

captainbland• 7 years ago

I think in principle this means we need to develop robots which are capable of disabling robots using means which are generally non-lethal (not through autonomous decision making, but matter-of-fact mechanisms like EMP, sensor blocking/jamming and so on).

carapace2• 7 years ago

Yes! Defense is easier than offense in general, especially with time to prepare.

One area that should be investigated is sticky hairy counter measures. Just think about what kills your vacuum cleaner?

Or what about rip-stop protective clothing that can kill a chainsaw in a split second? (I have my leg now because of protective chaps with kevlar fibers. Grubbing out a nasty old stump, one moment of inattention and the chain bit my leg, but the fibers jammed the saw in an instant. I looked down and it actually took me a few moments to realize that the rip in my chaps with the streamers of kevlar hanging down could have been my own precious meat! Man did I shiver, and send up a prayer of gratitude for the folks who made the chaps!)

Anyhow, once you start thinking defensively the ideas flow readily.

One idea I want to try is a thing that shoots those plastic balls (for the plastic ball pits you play in) but with a non-Newtonian goo (like cornstarch goo) that goes stiff at greater energies but is fluid at lesser. Result: anti-riot "foam". People can't run around and flail in it but you can still move around (to e.g. provide first aid). There could be an enzyme or something that can be sprayed to dissolve the goo... etc.

deogeo• 7 years ago

What worries me most is how robotic warfare further concentrates power. Currently you have to convince the people in the military to follow your orders, meaning you need at least some legitimacy. What happens when even that human check on power is gone?

thisisweirdok3• 7 years ago

This absolutely needs to be an agreed upon standard similar to chemical weapons and mines.

Anyone remotely familiar with software development knows that automating either when to launch or what to target will not end well.

Which bug will end a civilization?

v_lisivka3• 7 years ago

Forbid robots and send this guy instead. Two problems solved.

yboris• 7 years ago

Relevant: https://www.stopkillerrobots.org/

Formed in October 2012, the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is a coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that is working to ban fully autonomous weapons and thereby retain meaningful human control over the use of force.

georgeecollins• 7 years ago

Autonomous robots are going to be really effective in all the places where it is difficult for a human to survive and where decision making is mediated be technology, not human senses. So, they are going to be really effective deep underwater, in space, and in high-g aerial combat at radar range.

Setting aside the moral question, there is also the institutional issue that officers may not like to see pilots replaced with drones, sailors with UUAVs, etc. That creates this dangerous place where the US military can have it's manned systems disrupted by cheaper unmanned ones. I think that is dangerous for me.

As far as the moral issue: What is the difference between a machine firing a missile at a plane it believes is attacking and an officer on a ship pressing a button to fire that missile based on the risk assessment of a machine that tells the officer that an airliner is an attacker. Ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran_Air_Flight_655

In that case the crew may have made a mistake in judgement. But it is easy to see a potential future case where no human interpretation is better than how a computer interprets the incoming data, and humans have to act on the computer's judgement alone. We can insert humans in the loop but that may not really mean anything.

carapace2• 7 years ago

Push this to it's logical conclusion: Put the robots in an arena and decide policy based on who wins. No one has to get hurt and we don't even have to blow up real buildings and stuff.

Play war games to game war.

burfog• 7 years ago

The USA already has this. Russia and China have similar systems.

If you fly a kamikaze attack against a large US warship, Raytheon's Phalanx CIWS will automatically fire. I believe it handles speedboats as well. The Patriot system is similar, able to shoot down incoming fighter jets.

Don't Let Robots Pull the Trigger

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