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Pentagon Reassures Public That its Autonomous Robotic Tank Adheres to "Legal and Ethical Standards"

posted by takyon on Monday March 11 2019, @04:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the killbots-and-cream dept.

An Anonymous Coward writes:

The U.S. is seeking bids to improve its "basic" killbot to the the point where it can "acquire, identify, and engage targets at least 3X faster than the current manual process."

U.S. Army Assures Public That Robot Tank System Adheres to AI Murder Policy

Why does any of this matter? The Department of Defense Directive 3000.09, requires that humans be able to "exercise appropriate levels of human judgment over the use of force," meaning that the U.S. won't toss a fully autonomous robot into a battlefield and allow it to decide independently whether to kill someone. This safeguard is sometimes called being "in the loop," meaning that a human is making the final decision about whether to kill someone.

Industry Day for the Advanced Targeting and Lethality Automated System (ATLAS) Program. Also at Boing Boing.

Surely these will never be hacked!

Will an operator feel more trepidatious about taking life, due to not being in direct peril themselves? Or less because of greater desensitization? Anyone have any insightful links about drone operator psych outcomes? (Ed: Don't worry about it.)

Related information to inform the philosophical background of why having a human in the loop is required (they don't specify this but e.g. without the human, land mine agreements might start to apply): https://www.act.nato.int/images/stories/media/capdev/capdev_02.pdf

HEY EDITORS! I suggest a new topic: "tech and society" for stuff like this. (Ed: It's Digital Liberty.)

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:03AM (3 children)

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:03AM (#813042) Journal

    If you equate, "a clause permitting a party to withdraw when its superior national interests were threatened.", with whenever we feel like it.

    I don't know about the grandparent, but I sure would. It's not hard to come up with a superior national interest on demand. There might be all kinds of restrictions on the US's ability to use that clause, but coming up with the excuses isn't one.

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  • (Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:49PM (2 children)

    by Freeman (732) on Tuesday March 12 2019, @03:49PM (#813318) Journal

    Perhaps, but it would really depend on the definition of superior national interests. The ultimate goal of such a treaty should be the elimination of the threat anti-personnel landmines have towards civilians, so innocents aren't getting themselves blown-up. It seems to me that the United States' approach to this is effective. Especially, compared to say the likes of Turkey, who actually signed the treaty.

    Turkey reported that between 1957 and 1998, Turkish forces laid 615,419 antipersonnel mines along the Syrian border "to prevent illegal border crossings". These mines are killing Syrians stuck on the border or trying to cross near Kobanî. Turkey is required under the treaty to destroy all antipersonnel mines, but has missed deadlines. Human Rights Watch claims in its report that as of November 18, 2014, over 2,000 civilians were still in the Tel Shair corridor section of the mine belt because Turkey had been refusing entry for cars or livestock, and the refugees did not want to leave behind their belongings.[96]

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Treaty [wikipedia.org]

    Now, just think, what people's reactions would be, if the United States did the same thing with the US/Mexico border. The United States isn't even close to one of the "bad guys" when talking about anti-personnel landmines.

    --
    Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:10PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday March 12 2019, @04:10PM (#813331) Journal

      And before the election everyone was saying that nearly nobody would vote for a racist bigot who was also an admitted sexual predator. So I don't think you can count on public disgust to prevent the govt. from deciding that making the border an exclusion zone was a superior national interest.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.

    • (Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 13 2019, @06:14AM

      by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Wednesday March 13 2019, @06:14AM (#813606) Journal

      Perhaps, but it would really depend on the definition of superior national interests.

      Currently, that looks like interests that the US has.