Nicholas Umana
05/2/18
Militarized Autonomous Robotics and Weapon Systems
As the world that we live in continues to develop, the tools that enable our survival are becoming more and more cultivated. The technology of today?s society is currently progressing at an astounding rate. Scientists and philosophers are constantly warning our world against the concerns of an overdeveloped world of technology. The current technology that embodies our society and which will provide our future with the most potential for benefit, and also for threat, is the concept of militarized autonomous robotics and drones. The overwhelming importance behind militarized autonomous robotics is that this concept will change the way that conflict is resolved at the
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Independent weapons systems will have the ability to individually make the decision of life over death. They will have the ability to employ an escalation of force wherever they deem necessary. While researching arguments against using autonomous weapons, I found four main arguments. The first argument against autonomous robots is the idea of an inevitable arms race and revolution. Countries will inevitably race to develop stronger and more powerful artificial intelligence. This has the potential to create different cold wars between countries in the future. Autonomous robots will become the ?new nuclear race.? The second argument against autonomous robots is, the power to life over death. Robots will not be fully capable of having 100 percent distinction between allies, civilians, and opposing forces. Giving a robot the power over a trigger eliminates the moral accountability behind killing. Only humans should be able to be held accountable for a death; however, this moral accountability would be terminated with the production of autonomous robots. Robots lack the ability to feel emotion. Even with artificial intelligence, they may not necessarily be able to fully feel human emotion. Due to the fact that they cannot feel human emotion, they cannot understand the implications of their actions on a battlefield. The last argument against the employment of …show more content…
The short-term effects of autonomous weapon systems will make any nation in control of these systems very powerful. From an international standpoint, a country which possesses autonomous weapon system capabilities would more than likely become the hegemonic power of the world. However, the long-term applications of using autonomous weapons systems will be very different. Eventually, multiple nations will control autonomous robotics and will threaten humanity with the collision of these superpowers. The very long-term affect of these weapons systems is an eventual humanity overthrow by autonomous robots. The resources that I used which promoted the utilization autonomous weapon systems generally did so without considering the long term affects. The resources identified with greed and power in their arguments and failed to realize the moral unjustifications of autonomous robotics. ?In July of 2015, an open letter was written at an international autonomous joint conference, warning that AI technology will be feasible in years, not decades - signed by Elon Musk, and Stephen Hawking's? (Brookings, Singer). It is imperative in the future that international laws are placed on autonomous weapons which restrict the usage of them in certain manners. These weapon systems will need to comply with the Laws of Armed Conflict (LAOC). If the regulations of
However, it’s not difficult to imagine a world less than a century in the future with fully autonomous artificial intelligence. The concept of a superhuman-level intelligence, should, by it’s nature, terrify us. Yet we continue towards our inevitable take over. Others may argue that this is impossible to consider at our time in history, but it’s outrageous to ignore the fact that if we can imagine a world within the medium of film where androids or fictitious machines have triggered the singluarity. Moving away from the idea of a hostile takeover, we should be more cautious when talking about creating a machine that may one day develop enough that it can improve itself and someday create machines similar to or better than its own structure.
This paper discusses three aspects of the field of robotics The first is the history of where the ideas of robotics originated. Second, what was the effect that these ideas had on society? Finally, what developments in the field have proved to be useful to society?
The military use of lethally autonomous robots (LAR) is not science fiction – it is happening right now. A robot is a mechanism guided by automatic controls. Autonomous robots are able to independently maintain stability and plan action. The first generation of military robots have operated under direct human control. The most well-known military robots are “drones” or unmanned aerial vehicles. The drone system currently in use is the unmanned aerial vehicles IAI Pioneer & RQ-1 Predator which can be armed with air-to-ground missiles and remotely operated from a command center. Drones have already been used by the U.S. military for unmanned air attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and other war zones. (Merchant, 276).
Drones are the Future One of the latest and most controversial topics that has risen over the past five to ten years is whether or not drones should be used as a means of war, surveillance, and delivery systems. Common misconceptions usually lead to people’s opposition to the use of drones which is the reason it is important for people to know the facts about how and why they are used. Wartime capabilities will provide for fewer casualties and more effective strikes. New delivery and surveillance systems in Africa, the United Air Emirates and the United States will cut costs and increase efficiency across the board. Rules and regulations on drones may be difficult to enforce, but will not be impossible to achieve.
What are the arguments for and against the use of autonomous robots by the military? Reference both existing and potential future uses. Autonomous robots are machines that can perform certain tasks at a high level of automation and therefore do not need a lot of human intervention. The robots can gather information about the environment they’re in and avoid situations that are harmful to people. In certain cases, this means that the robots can actually find more suitable and safe methods of reaching their final goal as they get used to their surroundings.
When most people think of artificial intelligence they might think of a scene from I, Robot or from 2001: A Space Odyssey. They might think of robots that highly resemble humans start a revolution against humanity and suddenly, because of man’s creation, man is no longer the pinnacle of earth’s hierarchy of creatures. For this reason, it might scare people when I say that we already utilize artificial intelligence in every day society. While it might not be robots fighting to win their freedom to live, or a defense system that decides humanity is the greatest threat to the world, artificial intelligence already plays a big role in how business is conducted today.
Another name for drones are Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVS). These are “aircraft either controlled by ‘pilots’ from the ground or increasingly, autonomously following a pre-programmed mission” (Cole 4). Even though there are many unique types of drones, but they usually fall under two main categories: ones that are armed and equipped with missiles and bombs and others that are used for surveillance. In the past couple of years the use of drones has increased dramatically. The reason being because “unlike manned aircraft they can stay aloft for many hours and are flown remotely so there is no danger to the flight crew” (Cole 13). There are drones that can actually fly over more than fifty hours. In countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq, the Predator and U.S Reaper are physically there. Cause of the power of technology th...
Bar-Cohen, Y. (2009). The coming robot revolution expectations and fears about emerging intelligent, humanlike machines. Springer.
Nowadays, technology is a dominant feature in the lives of people around the world. Most of daily life activities involve the use of technology which is expanding every day through scientific innovations. However, such innovations do not always occur in every part of the world, but mostly in technologically developed countries, such as South Korea, the USA and Japan. Presently, the development of robotics science has become a subject of considerable attention in those countries. According to Weng, Chen and Sun (2009, 267), “Technocrats from many developed countries, especially Japan and South Korea, are preparing for the human–robot co-existence society that they believe will emerge by 2030.” The word “robot” was introduced in the beginning of 1920th by the Czech playwright Karel Capek from the Czech word “robota”, meaning “forced labor” (Robertson 2007, 373). According to Robertson (2007, 373), robot, in practical usage, can be defined as an autonomous or semiautonomous device that is used to perform its tasks either controlled by human, fractionally controlled and with human guidance or regardless of external actions that are performed by people. Regrettably, the majority of robots in the past centuries could not operate without human control and intervention. However, the progress in robotics over the past few decades enabled humanity to achieve soaring results in creation of autonomous humanoid robots.
Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI, allows a machine to function as if the machine has the capability to think like a human. While we are not expecting any hovering cars anytime soon, artificial intelligence is projected to have a major impact on the labor force and will likely replace about half the workforce in the United States in the decades to come. The research in artificial intelligence is advancing rapidly at an unstoppable rate. So while many people feel threatened by the possibility of a robot taking over their job, computer scientists actually propose that robots would benefit a country’s efficiency of production, allowing individuals to reap the benefits of the robots. For the advantage of all, researchers and analysts have begun to mend the past ideas of human-robot interaction. They have pulled inspiration from literary works of Isaac Asimov whom many saw as the first roboticist ahead of his time, and have also gotten ideas of scholarly research done by expert analysts. These efforts have began to create an idea of a work force where humans and robots work together in harmony, on a daily basis.
Scientific progress makes huge milestones toward developing new advanced technologies which are more and more present in human lives. Today robots replace people in many spheres such as health care, security and military, industry, education, entertainment and science. Role of robots becomes more significant because they are able to do the job which people are not able to perform well. Sometimes people are too lazy to do some routine work, due to such situation those tasks could be delegated to machines. People’s life become more technology based what makes demand for efficient robots larger. Engineers say that today robots look like machines, but in near future robots will have more human appearance, today they do some simple job, but in near future much more complicated tasks would be trusted to them. History of robotics goes far to the history when the ancient Greeks describes first devices that people were projected to fly to the sky like birds. In fact, heart of any robot is some program that direct the device and control it actions. Robot cannot perform the tasks that was not programmed in it and this if the factor what makes it quite limited in its actions. Current studies in robotics are aimed to remove those disadvantages and make robots more functional and universal through development of artificial intelligence that can operate independently. Curiosity of world community to robotics increase every day what make all the research and inventions in robotics more demanded. History of robots, resent achievement and future perspectives of robotics have to be studies and researched to understand what machines can give to humanity and what pros and cons exist in the r...
Bar-Cohen, Yoseph, and David Hanson. The Coming Robot Revolution: Expectations and Fears about Emerging Intelligent, Humanlike Machines. New York: Springer, 2009. Print.
My biggest concern is that we cannot trust these robots. We all know how technology works these days. Oh wait, it hardly works. There is always something going wrong with technology; you can never rely on it. You want to write a research paper? Well good luck, the internet is most likely bound to be down. Isn’t that what always seems to happen? You never know with technology. Why would people think robots would be any different?...
...ings to ignore. For example, they affect the manner in which the brain functions. Robots also affect the social life of people, in society, which has become an ethical issue among many researchers. On the right side, robots also offer security to families and companies and perform duties that are dangerous to human beings. In addition to that, robots are of benefit in the medical field especially to students with disabilities and those awaiting organ transplant procedures. This is where robots help them remain in touch with their friends. However, there are many security concerns in regard of robotic objects, especially when people use them in place of human interactions. However, the coming days may produce advanced robots with sensor-based, animated devices that use expressive sound, light, movement a screens to praise, encourage, advice and comfort human beings.
To conclude, robots could be the backbone of the society that will result in a technological revolution. Because of robots various characteristics that do not experience fear, nor exhaustion and they are precisely programmed, which make them able to help in case of need, housework, and factories production. Society needs to put the issue of robots into consideration to satisfy any shortage exists in the world.