Military Robots And The Laws of War

From The New Atlantis:

More than just conventional wisdom, it has become almost a cliché to say that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have proved “how technology doesn’t have a big place in any doctrine of future war,” as one security analyst told me in 2007. The American military efforts in those countries (or so the thinking goes) have dispelled the understanding of technology-dominated warfare that was prevalent just a few years ago—the notion that modern armed conflict would be fundamentally changed in the age of computers and networks.

It is true that Afghanistan and Iraq have done much to puncture that understanding of war. The vaunted theory, so beloved in the Rumsfeld-era Pentagon, of a “network-centric” revolution in military affairs can now be seen more clearly as a byproduct of the 1990s dotcom boom. The Internet has certainly affected how people shop, communicate, and date. Amid this ecstatic hype, it is not surprising that many security studies experts, both in and out of the defense establishment, latched onto the notion that linking up all our systems via electronic networks would “lift the fog of war,” allow war to be done on the cheap, and even allow the United States to “lock out” competition from the marketplace of war, much as they saw Microsoft doing to Apple at the time.

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What's Next? Robot Rights for Battlefield 'Bots?

From The Danger Room:

There's something about warbots that makes people go from the hyper-rational to the science-fictional, quicker than you can say "Cylon."

A report released today by the Ethics + Emerging Technologies Group at Cal Poly and funded by the Office of Naval Research is the latest in a growing cottage industry of academics and non-profits sorting out the ethical implications of increasingly sophisticated military robotics.

The report explores concrete issues, like how the laws of wars might have to be adapted to account for all these tele-operated planes and infantrymen. Then it strays into Galactica turf, getting into the issue of 'robot rights.'

For now, robots are seen as merely a tool that humans use, morally no different (except in financial value) than a hammer or a rifle ‐‐ their only value is instrumental, as a means to our ends. But as robots begin to assume aspects of human decision‐making capabilities, the question may arise of their intrinsic value: do they deserve moral consideration of their own (beyond their financial or tactical value), and at what point in their evolution will they achieve this intrinsic value (as human lives seem to have)?

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Do Humanlike Machines Deserve Human Rights?

Elmo Live (Image from Gadget Review)

From Wired:

During the 20 months that Fisher-Price spent developing the innards and software of its latest animatronic Elmo, engineers gave the project the code name Elmo Live. And sure enough, they made him more animate than ever: He moves his mouth in time with the stories he tells, shivers when he gets scared, and has a fit when he sneezes.

When they were finally able to test the doll on children, they were struck by how immediately the kids blocked out all other stimuli in the room and began interacting with Elmo. "It was as if Elmo were part of their family," says Gina Sirard, Fisher-Price VP of marketing. "To a child, he really is alive."

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