Many of us have learned to accept that robots are and will be an important part of our life for a very long time to come. We are very much in the midst of the fourth industrial revolution, and robots are one of the key elements of this. But, as we humans keep creating robots to be more and more sophisticated and to be able to learn for themselves are we putting ourselves and others at risk unnecessarily?
The International Committee of the Red Cross are also concerned with people’s safety with the introduction of so many killer robots into society and are calling upon States to set rules for autonomous weapons to ensure they are within the boundaries of International Humanitarian Law (IHL). They spoke out in Geneva recently at the Meeting of Experts on Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems on the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons.
Spot And Marines At Quantico
Remote Control Army Robot
The meeting was set up to design some rules for the use of autonomous weapons. The most important points that were covered by the Red Cross were centered around the need to have human intervention available alongside autonomous weapons. Essentially, there needs to be a human that can stop the weapon if need be. For the rules to coincide with humanitarian laws the weapon must be predictable, and without a human controlling it 100 percent, how could this be?
The Red Cross are not the only ones to be concerned for people’s safety when it comes to robots. Professor Heather M. Roff recently wrote about autonomous weapons and in her paper, she argues that the dangers involved from using robots on the battlefield are so great that they should be banned altogether.
This big, worldwide debate on the use of robots in combat and to what level they should be involved is one that could go on for quite some time before there are some clear cut ground rules that everyone will be happy with. The need for robots is clear, but to what extent we compromise our own people’s security is yet to be determined.
Source; ICRC
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