Top US general warns against rogue killer robots

The Hill ^ | 07/18/17 | JOHN BOWDEN

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The second-highest-ranking general in the U.S. military on Tuesday warned lawmakers against equipping the armed forces with autonomous weapons systems that humans could lose control of and advocated for keeping the "ethical rules of war" in place.

In a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Tuesday, Gen. Paul Selva responded to a question from Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) about a Defense Department directive that requires a human operator to be involved in the decision-making process when it comes to taking lives with autonomous weapons systems.

Selva warned lawmakers that the military should keep "the ethical rules of war in place lest we unleash on humanity a set of robots that we don't know how to control."

"I don't think it's reasonable for us to put robots in charge of whether or not we take a human life," Selva told the committee. Peters mentioned that the directive expires later this year and told Selva that America's enemies would not hesitate to use such technology.

"Our adversaries often do not consider the same moral and ethical issues that we consider each and every day," Peters told Selva.

Selvar responded, saying that America does and should always "take our values to war."

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Handbook of Robotics, 56th Edition, 2058 A.D.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.^[1]

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4 prime directives of RoboCop:

1. Serve the public trust
2. Protect the innocent
3. Uphold the law
4. [Classified]

[SVTCobra03]

Skynet.

[blueunicorn6]

Just more work for me.

I’m a Blade Runner.

I “retire” robots.

[LambSlave]

When other nations use groups of relatively cheap, lethal robotic systems linked to stand-off shooters utilizing swarm intelligence to wipe out HVTs or entire units inside the human decision maker;s OODA, this short sighted idiot will change his tune. Mark my words, when we lose an ABCT or most of a carrier group to an integrated UAS swarm, we will drop this pacifist lunacy and hopefully the credibility of the idiots who have been pushing these ideas for the last twenty years will cause a revolution in RDT&E and defense policy.

[Verginius Rufus]

1980 (Jimmy Carter Presidency): rogue killer rabbits.

2017 (Donald Trump Presidency): rogue killer robots.

[tumblindice]

[Vaquero]

[nuke_road_warrior]

Berserkers (Fred Saberhagen)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berserker_(Saberhagen)

[Ciaphas Cain]

"You have twenty seconds to comply."

[Vaquero]

I think any robots rules of order is limited to protect Isaac Asimov and perhaps Ray Bradbury. Everyone else is on there own

[Billthedrill]

Oh, don't be silly. These robots can be made to be just as reliable as, say, GPS is.

[BitWielder1]

2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

I always had problems with rule 2, a robot must have some concept of which humans are authorized to give it orders and who it must refuse or ignore.
Robots would be useless if anyone could give it orders they must obey, you could not even use it as a nanny.

Battle Robots must have a kill switch, no pun intended, so if it gets captured it can not be reprogrammed and turned on us.

[wally_bert]

#4 - Make sure that NBC keeps Stephanie Zimbalist from being the co-star in the first movie.

[\/\/ayne]

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[SauronOfMordor]

There’s also the possibility of robots being hacked. Suddenly, your robot army becomes the enemy’s robot army.

[sargon]

When other nations use groups of relatively cheap, lethal robotic systems linked to stand-off shooters utilizing swarm intelligence to wipe out HVTs or entire units inside the human decision maker;s OODA, this short sighted idiot will change his tune. Mark my words, when we lose an ABCT or most of a carrier group to an integrated UAS swarm, we will drop this pacifist lunacy and hopefully the credibility of the idiots who have been pushing these ideas for the last twenty years will cause a revolution in RDT&E and defense policy.

Care to translate that into English for those of us who aren't fluent with military abreviations?

[Future Snake Eater]

All this really means is that we need to ensure decent network hardening to prevent our own autonomous/semi-autonomous weapons from being turned against us. You can bet we’re working on that capability against other countries.

[Kommodor]

I’ll give it a go:

cheap lethal robots yada yada, wipe out high value targets or entire units inside the humans decision making loop (ie before they have a chance to observe, orient, decide, act).

...

Lose an ??? armored battalion or something to unmanned aerial system swarm

...

revolution in research, development, test and evaluation.

Translated to Texan:

When the injuns whup our butts with their fancy robots, maybe we’ll get off of what’s left of said butts, invent better robots & whup theirs instead.