New Laws of Robotics Proposed for US Kill-Bots

jakosc writes "The Register has a short commentary about a proposed new set of laws of robotics for war robots by John S Canning of the Naval Surface Warfare Centre. Unlike Asimov's three laws of robotics Canning proposes (pdf) that we should 'Let machines target other machines and let men target men.' Although this sounds OK in principle, 'a robot could decide under Mr Canning's rules, to target a weapon system such as an AK47 for destruction on its own initiative, requiring no permission from a human. If the person holding it was thereby killed, that would be collateral damage and the killer droid would be in the clear.'"

Robot laws

Are for books and movies.. In the real world the only law is to win. You cant come in 2nd in a war.

unless ...

you're French.

... ducks ...

Re:Robot laws

Plus robots are controlled by someone at a terminal...they don't control themselves. I think this whole discussion is pointless until we have AI.

Re:Robot laws

Plus robots are controlled by someone at a terminal...they don't control themselves.

Uhhh... no.
If someone is controlling it, at best it is a telerobot (semi-autonomous) or at worst, a telemanipulator.

A robot, by definition is autonomous and does not have or require human control.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telerobotics [wikipedia.org]

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The weapons system must use two forms of verification to identify friend or foe.

How does it work with un-uniformed combatants?

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How does it work with un-uniformed combatants?

Poorly?

Re:Robot laws

I don't know which system he's talking about, but the phalanx systems on battleships is a fully autonomous system that can shoot down enemy aircraft and even knock missiles out of the sky.

It's knows which is which because all of the friendly aircraft have IFF systems that identify themselves.

Re:Robot laws

It also works because the parameters that it uses to determine a threat are difficult for civilians to replicate. ie: Flying at a Navy ship at 1000+ mph. Handing out "don't shoot me" tags to civilians isn't gonna work so well in urban warfare. I hate to say it, but seeing as "terrorist" style tactics are the only realistic way to take on a more powerful military force, they are now a permenant part of war. As such, the idea of trying to treat the local civilians as "not the enemy" will not last another decade. The current US handling of Iraq will look as over civilized as Napoleanic "march in a straight line" warfare looks to us today. The robots will kill anyone outside after curfew.

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"they are now a permenant part of war"

Get over the idea that "terrorists" are new, they have been with us since we started forming tribes and throwing rocks at each other.

As for machines that autonomusly kill humans, landmines and other such traps ha

Re:Robot laws

"I don't see the grounds for comparison."

In times of old a commoner's life was less secure. The lords of old had their own armys, armys are used to control territory regardless of who "owns" it (like many places in the world today). Although the lords eventually lost their private armies, mantraps were a legal symbol of disregard for commoner's that lasted well into the 1800's.

** caution rant ahead **

Edisons father tied him up and gave him a public arse flogging in the center of town when he was a child, that same act in the same town today would land his father in jail. When I was a kid black people couldn't vote, homo's deserved any beating they got, living together out of wedlock made you a social outcast, young and pregnant meant you had to give up your child for adoption so as not to shame your family, being a woman (or black or asian) meant I could pay you peanuts, harrass you at work, and sack you for not sucking my dick.

In a lot of ways we treat each other with more respect than we did even 50yrs ago, IMO the reason is because nation states are not that different to the fuedal lords of England and Europe who eventually worked out that beating the shit out of each other for the right to ransom each others nobility was counter-productive. I think GWB took us a step backwards but the historical trend toward a more and more "inclusive" society is hard to deny.

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Yes some good has come of it, but many supporters have come to realise the means doesn't justify the end.

"However, unless you believe that a woman submitted to the taliban mullahs participated in an "inclusive" society, GWB took an important step *forwa

Re:Robot laws

Robots that are smart enough to understand said laws are also only in books and movies.

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Unfortunately, the same point applies to humans.

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And if by winning you flush the morals of your country down the drain? That's cool? So by your logic the Germans were damned-right in killing 6,000,000 jews, the Americans were spot-on destroying countless villages in Vietnam, the British were fine havin

Oh yeah?

I can name plenty of nations that have come "second" in a war - and yet outlasted those who "beat" them. The Scots were crushed by the Romans (the Antonine Wall is practically on the northern beaches), mauled by the Vikings and butchered by the Tudors. Guess who outlasted them all? I'll give you a clue - they also got their Stone back.

They're not the only ones. The Afghans - even with legally-dubious US support - never defeated the Russians, they merely lasted longer than the Russian bank accounts. The Celts were amongst the worst European fighters who ever lived, getting totally massacred by everyone and their cousin Bob, but Carthage stands in ruins, the Angles and Saxons only survive in tiny isolated communities in England and America (Oppenheiner's "The Origins of the British" shows that W.A.S.P.s exist only in their own mind, they have no historical reality), but the Celtic nations are actually doing OK for themselves at the moment.

Arguably, Serbia won the Balkans conflict, having conquered most of the lands belonging to their neighbors and slaughtered anyone who might claim them back. Uh, they're not doing so well for having won, are they? Kicked out of EU merger talks, Montenegro calling them a bunch of losers, Kosovo giving them the finger...

Hell, even the United States won in Iraq, as far as the actual war went.

Winning is the easy part. Anyone can win. Look how much of the world the British conquered. The British won far more than most nations could ever dream of. Yet contemporary accounts (I own several) describe the Great Exhibition as a PR stunt to create a delusion of grandeur that never existed. The Duke of Wellington, that master of winning, was described as a senile buffoon who was dribbling down his shirt and had to be propped up by others to stay on his horse. What's left of the Commonwealth shows you all too well that those descriptions of delusion were the reality, not the winning and not the gloating.

History dictates that who comes second in a war usually outlasts those who come first.

No

This is total nonsense. First off, the Afghans _did_ beat the russians, as the Russians pulled out and stopped attacking. They didn't beat them in a strategic sense with tanks ans planes and whatnot, but they still clearly won. Secondly, your anecdotes don't makes sense. If the Celts that are around today are the same ones that were around to get the crap beaten out of them a thousand years ago, then guess what, the Romans are fine we just call them Italians now. Winning isn't bad, witness the USSR, the third reich, the Persian empire, on and on, for whom losing didn't work out well.

You're confusing governments with peoples. Yes the Irish are still around. So are the Italians, so, in fact, are the Germans, Japanese, and Brits. Winning or losing wars rarely affects that, with notable exceptions like the Native Americans, for whom I think it's pretty obvious losing was a bad thing. What aren't still around are governments. And while winning might not make one last forever, I think Hitler and Hirohito would tell you losing is much worse.

Seriously, the only way winning would not be a virtue, is if it led to complacency, arrogance, and ultimately weakness. But even then, you would have to _lose_ a war for it to matter. And really, with the exception of the Native American's most peoples have survived, and there's really no one to outlast. You are thinking of governments, and trust me, just because you can't think of the names of the governments that disappeared (fair because winners write history) they did.

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Are for books and movies.. In the real world the only law is to win. You cant come in 2nd in a war.

On the contrary, winning at any cost is often far worse than losing. A Pyrrhic Victory [wikipedia.org] often invites an even greater disaster in the future, but simply los

Re:Robot laws

And that's why people all over the world don't take kindly to US forces being near them, regardless of their expressed intent. Collateral damage might only be paperwork to the US forces, but to those directly affected, it's just another reason to fight back. Each death makes a whole family your enemy.

Re:Robot laws

You dont think that some muslim that blows himself up in a car bomb cares about collateral damage? Hell, that is his main intent...

Pure flamebait. Just what does that have to do with the parent's argument? Not only have you equated all Muslims (including the ones in our armed forces) with terrorists, you've also suggested that the behavior of the terrorists somehow serves as a premise for our own battefield ethics. Yes, war is ruthless and savage, but being a human being requires you to have some measure of..humanity.

The only purpose REMOTELY possible by US military activity at the moment, is to (forcefully) create states that are NOT dangerous enemies to western civilization. If we followed your logic, even that last hope will be lost.

Re:Robot laws

The old "no using .50s on personnel, they're for equipment only" fallacy gets thrown around a lot. In fact, my best friend even had it told to him when he was in basic. According to a DOD legal briefing: nothing in the Geneva or Hague Conventions prohibited the use of .50 cal weapons on enemy personel, the Hague Conventions only apply to signatory nations' UNIFORMED military personel, and US military personel always have the right to defend themselves and other personel with deadly force, using whatever weapon(s) are available; including fists, rocks, pointy sticks, knives, shotguns, cannon, etc.

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The keyword here is "defend". The Norwegian armys standard issue is Heckler & Koch G3 (Slightly modified, renamed to AG3, and produced on licence in Norway). It uses 7.62mm rounds. Norwegian "Special Forces" are equipped with H&K MP5s. The reasonin

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You must be mistaken. The 7.62mm round NATO is well within the Geneva Conventions for use against personnel. Many Geneva signatory nations have used and continue to use the 7.62mm. The reason it is no longer popular is because the 5.56mm NATO is lighter an

Re:Robot laws

I'll assume you're a fucking moron, because you are. If Norway sent its infantry abroad, it would not equip them with AG3s.

Are all Norwegians this polite, gentle, and peace-loving? In any event, reality must have an anti-Norwegian bias, because Norway has sent its soldiers to Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and it sent them armed with AG3's (along with even bigger guns) [nato.int]. In the latter two nations they are even operating under the aegis of NATO, rather than the UN. Fortunately the Norwegeian government has ensured they are properly armed, but (sadly) this hasn't stopped them from killing civilian demonstrators [aftenposten.no] or getting killed themselves [bbc.co.uk].

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Are all Norwegians this polite, gentle, and peace-loving? In any event, reality must have an anti-Norwegian bias, because Norway has sent its soldiers to Bosnia, Kosovo and Afghanistan, and it sent them armed with AG3's (along with even bigger guns). In th

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Sheesh...

The Geneva conventions take NO stance on the 12.5mm/50cal ammuntion and it's usage on humans. For that matter, shotguns loaded with slugs are larger in diameter. The whole 'aiming at equipment, such as a belt buckle', is most likely the result o

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You can't win a war either.

Bullshit and liberal psycho-babble claptrap.

You get in fight, the other guy is bleeding more than you are and down for the count - You Win!

You get sued, the other guy loses more money than you - You Win!

You get into a war, yo

If you nuke someone

Then you die of radiation sickness eventually. Chernobyl was a mere chemical explosion and the fallout went how far? The US coast, as I recall. My father was involved in measuring the plutonium content of British rainwater. It was substantial, with parts o

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The only place your philosophy works is also the only place pacifism works, in a theoretical la-la world of perfect situations where everyone else thinks like you (god forbid that ever happens).

The last bit you said is the disturbing part regarding your

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You can't win a war either.

Bullshit and liberal psycho-babble claptrap.

No, basic understanding of war. There are no "winners" in a war -- there are only those who lose worse.

If you're sitting at a bar, and some guy gets rowdy, you get into a fistfight, and the other guy spends the rest of the night bleeding on the floor. S

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Let's look at the flawed logic and assumptions in this one by one:

You get in fight, the other guy is bleeding more than you are and down for the count - You Win!

Simplistic limited idealistic model. Can be disproven by so many more enlarged situational c

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You have a warped vision of why the military exists. It's not to serve you, me, your country, my country, or any other emotionally driven crap feel good ideology. The military is simply one part of a larger political arsenal controlled by a small few, usua

Three rules...

1) Spell "Asimov" correctly when submitting an article to Slashdot.

2) The military will program their toys to kill everything and everything, and to hell with Asimov (right up until they turn on us)

3) Humans already count as collateral damage in warfare. Damn the men, spare the oilfields!

Re:Three rules...

You obviously don't understand how oil works. We rarely get oil from the middle east. We get it from closer sources, when available. Why? Because that's cheaper. But the total world has demand, and there is only so much production. Increasing production in Iraq lowers our oil costs, no matter who we are purchasing it from. It really is that simple.

huh

This assumes a level of optical recognition that is missing in current robots. Also, once you let these things go, there is a ton of reliance on the programming and the technology. In my opinion, there should be no autonomous robots on the battlefield. Drones are one thing, with the pilot safe elsewhere, but completely automated robots are another.

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This assumes a level of optical recognition that is missing in current robots

Once the Borg assimilate everyone then the lines will become rather fuzzy. We've already taken the first few steps by RFID'ing everything, chipping our pets (I hear it's mandatory in California), and some companies have even chipped their employees.

How i

Sounds more like RoboCop laws of robotics...

It's like RoboCop: You shall not harm any employee of the your owners. But you have the authority to find a way to get them fired, and THEN kill them. And no one found any problem with this until their boss was dead in front of them, and they realized they could be next.

Honestly though, I see value in a policy that no human life should be risked in automatic death systems - including land mines and other traps. These loopholes make that policy as useless as some RoboCop parody though.

Ryan Fenton

No, the original three laws work too.

Remember the Spacer worlds, who defined "human" to mean people like themselves? More than one book covered robots who killed - or tried to kill - humans because the definition had been made selective enough.

This reflects how real wars are fought, too. Na

Protects against political problems, not sentience

The article summary doesn't give the right impression... the proposed policy would allow machines to target military machines. (see p.15-16 of the PDF) Page 23 is the most interesting, saying that anti-personnel landmines are looked down upon in the international community because they linger after war and kill civilians, whereas anti-tank mines aren't looked down upon so much, because they can only misfire during an armed conflict. So the policy is mostly intended to address international political responses to war, not to prevent sentient machines from taking over the human race.

Though, it would limit somewhat the extent to which machines could enslave the human race... if humans never took up arms, machines could never take lethal action against humans. That doesn't mean machines couldn't control humans politically/economically/socially (eg. deny food, deny housing), but it does mean they couldn't take up a policy of overt extermination of all humans, unless humans decided to fight to the last.

And how would these "laws" be programmed?

Until a robot can think, in such a way that it resembles how a human thinks, I think coming up with "laws" such as these are next to useless unless you want a philosophical discussion or a what-if scenario. We have hard enough time trying to get robots to recognize images for what they are (AFAIK some high end surveillance systems for the government can do this on a primitive level -- ie it can't learn to recognize much beyond it's programming) - how would you program such arbitrary, human concepts? Do we wave our hands and make it so?

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More importantly: weren't all of the Robot Novels really about how the rules didn't work out the way we expect. The charm of the books were that they revealed logical puzzles: how unexpected behavior was in accordance with the rules, absolutely disastrous

Reminds me of a story

During the Vietnam War a unit armed with anti-aircraft autocannons were surrounded by Vietcong. Technically, they were not allowed to open fire on anything other then equipment with such weapons. Not really being a fan of dying, the leader of this unit order his men to open fire and slaughtered the VC. During his court marshal hearing he was asked if he understood the rules of engagement. He said that he did. He was then asked if he had violated the rules of engagement. He responded that he did not violate his rules of engagement. He was asked how opening fire with his weapons upon half-naked VC did not violate his rules of engagement. His answer? He did not order his men to fire at the VC. He told his men to shoot at the VCs guns and canteens, hence he was shooting that their equipment.

Killbots? A trifle.

You see, killbots have a preset kill limit. Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down.

Killing by proxy, "collateral damage"

'a robot could decide under Mr Canning's rules, to target a weapon system such as an AK47 for destruction on its own initiative, requiring no permission from a human. If the person holding it was thereby killed, that would be collateral damage and the killer droid would be in the clear.'"

The geneva convention frowns upon collateral damage [spj.org], though someone is not a civilian if they're holding a weapon (see the "spontaneousy takes up arms" bit.) That's not a good enough excuse. A person holding a gun is not necessarily a soldier. The could be a homeowner, defending their property from looters, for example. That's why you are supposed to give a chance of surrender. Will a robot do that, reliably? Will a robot properly identify and treat hors de combat people?

Here's a bigger, related question: a robot is a)not a person and b)maybe more durable. A human soldier is allowed to fire in defense. Picture a homeowner in wartime, guarding his house. Robot trundles by, x-rays the house, sees the weapon, charges in. He sees it heading for him, freaks out, fires at it. How can the robot possibly be justified in killing him? Even if it represents a threat, you're only threatening a machine!

Second point: this is really just "killing by proxy." Regardless of whether you pull a trigger on a machine gun, or flip a switch on the General Dynamics Deathmachine 2000: if you knew your actions would cause injury or death, you're culpable. It's not the robot that is responsible when a civilian or hors de combat soldier is killed: it's the operators. Robots don't kill people: people build, program, and operate robots that kill people.

Premature

Is it just me or is a discussion of ethics laws for robots premature given the state of the art in artificial intelligence? If you want to teach a machine not to harm humans, it helps to first teach the machine the difference between a human and every other object it encounters.

War is Hell

"War is Hell"

Ever read All Quiet on the Western Front? Ever talked to someone who was there or a civilian in European WWII?

War sucks. It's supposed to suck. Without the pain and suffering that war can bring to all sides of the battle, winners and losers alike. Perhaps the generals should go watch Star Trek Episode 23, A Taste of Armageddon, circa 1967.

That society has done such a nice job making war "clean" that they have decided to continue fighting a war for 500 years rather than just figure out how to make peace.

In most societies, people are taught that violence against others is fundamentally bad. This becomes a moral element that entwines all the people within that society. It also motivates the same people to find ways around doing violence.

If you study anything about the Nazi camps in WWII they had a growing behaviour where the soldiers in the concentration camps knew what they were doing but absolved themselves of any responsibility by hiding behind the statement, "I was just following orders", thereby removing themselves morally from the actitivies. After WWII this was considered to be a War Crime and has been backed by hundreds of trials across the world.

Fast forward 60 years and we are at a point where the soldiers who are operating a computer screen which operates these killer robots can absolve themselves from any responsibility of moral involvement because the Laws will simply allow them to say, I was just operating a computer program. And while this is going on, there is no one left to come back from the battlefield to serve as a reminder of just how bad war really is and how important it is to avoid it.

At the same time if we are going to commit to a war, we had better be willing to do it to completion even when it gets ugly. I'm pretty pissed at the news for giving us daily body counts of 4 and 10 soldiers on a 5 year battle. In contrast, WWII was hundreds to thousands a day and everyone was sticking to their plan. Everyone was commited to the plan and everyone knew why they were fighting. Vietnam wasn't so clear cut. It was rather vague as to why were where there and even on day one, not everyone was convinced we needed that war. And now we are in the Middle East without a convincing and clear cut plan as to what we are doing, why we are there, what we hope to accomplish, and not enough people in the States give a shit. Perhaps in New York City, but no where else.

They'll get their killer robots and their legal loopholes to kill anything they want and no one will really do much because it's clean and doesn't interfere with "Dancing with the Stars" and the sheep continue to bleat

Please won't somebody think of the kill droids?

I don't understand this or think its at all fair. We should not be imposing rules on the poor kill droids that are contrary to their nature. A kill droid so be free to romp and do what it does best kill anything and everything.

Honestly this strikes me like thoes people who adopt dogs that are prone to barking and then put collars on them to shock them when they do it. Its unfair I say, and worng to force something to act contrary to its nature. If you don't want a dog that barks much you should adopt a bread which is not given to barking or maybe just get a cat.

The same is true for robots. If you don't want a robot that runs around killing everything it detects especially you then you should forgo adopting or building a kill droid. Maybe go get yourself one of thoes more friendly industrial breads that enjoys welding steel pannels onto cars or if space is a concern some types of robots are very small and even enjoy roaming around your home vacuming the floor for you as they do. There is an appropriate type of robot for almost ever situation. Please be responsible and only adopt a kill droid if you have adequate supplies of victims for it to kill.

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Running Lotus Notes?

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Well, one of Asimov's best short stories was "Spell my name with an S", where the character changed the 1st letter of his name from Z to S. All the Zebatinskys of the world got their revenge now :)

Worthwhile pursuit

There aren't any immediately-practical uses for robotics laws, but if it gets people thinking about ethics & technology I'm all for 'em.

OMG! THEY KILLED KINNEY!

Bastards!