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.'"

Re:Robot laws

[n__0]

It's important to have the laws before the AI, otherwise the AI won't care so much for the laws. Although whether anything truly intelligent would strictly obey laws is debatable.

Re:Asimov. With an "S".

[gmuslera]

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 :)

Reminds me of a story

[Shihar]

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.

Oh yeah?

[jd]

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.

If you nuke someone

[jd]

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 of Britain hitting 2000 times normal background.

If you beat someone in court, you win? Oh, then the Sioux own the Black Hills. Hey, they won their Supreme Court battle to reclaim them, and by your rules that makes them the winner, right? Uh, no.

If someone's down because you punched them, you're the winner? Not in Texas, where this would give every citizen who had a clear view of events the right to shoot you dead under their new self-defence laws. Being dead makes for a lousy winner. (I don't like those laws, but that's not the point. The point is, one battle does not a war make.)

The British have long recognized the futility of talking about winners and losers. The notion that no such animals exist infuse their culture, their media, even their sci-fi. ("Whoever loses shall win, and he who wins shall lose." Dr Who, 5 Doctors. I won't get into Roger Price's routine dissing of the military, save to say that in his view, Homo Superior cannot kill - even in self-defence - and that is what makes them superior.)

Re:Robot laws

[Terminal Saint]

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.

Re:Robot laws

[CptPicard]

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 kind, and is really revealing. You really believe that it would be BAD we lived in a world where this worked? You actually want war and thrive in it? This sort of stuff just makes me want more the ability to diagnose embryos for conservatism (and don't you come complain aborting them would be wrong; disabled ones are aborted all the time due to efficiency...)

Re:Robot laws

[repvik]

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 reasoning behind this is that we are allowed to *defend* our country with AG3, but we cannot use the same weapon in an *attack*, thus we have to equip our "attack forces" with MP5s. The same applies to .50 cal (12.7mm), no matter how much the U.S. tries to twist its way out of restrictions that apply to everyone.

Re:Robot laws

[cyphercell]

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

How does it work with un-uniformed combatants?

Re:Robot laws

[Original Replica]

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.

Re:Robot laws

[Bishop]

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 and equally effective on the battlefield.

If what you state is true the Norwegian special forces would not use the MP5. The MP5 fires a 9mm or similar round which causes more trauma then the steel jacketed 7.62mm or 5.56mm rounds.

If the Norwegian soldiers are equipped differently when posted abroad it is more likely due to logistics then any clause in the Geneva Conventions. It is common for armies to equip deployed soldiers with the latest equipment. Deployed soldiers will face the greatest risk. It only makes sense to train and equip them with the latest firearms first. I can't find any indication that the Norwegian army uses any other rifle then the AG-3 as a main battle rifle. It was recently announced that the AG-3 would be replaced by the HK416, a 5.56mm rifle. It may be that deployed soldiers have been using the HK416 or other 5.56mm rifle as part of the selection process for the new rifle.

Re:Robot laws

[Walt Dismal]

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 components. 1) you win the fight, the cops put you in jail, you maybe lose your job, or get sued, so you lose your home, etc.

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

You go down in multiple databases forever as having been in a lawsuit; your wife leaves you for wasting your family's money because your testosterone drove you to a macho resolution instead of one with foresight

You get into a war, you nuke the other guy into submission - You Win!

This one has so many flaws it's sad. 1) The rest of the world decides you're a country led by morons and stops trading with you, your economy hurts 2) other countries trade with you but charge you more now 3) you have contaminated the world with radioactivity, hurting us all. The depleted uranium we use in Afghanistan and Iraq is not only ruining their land for a long time forward, it is causing genetic damage and illnesses in our soldiers who then come home and have a lifetime of agony.

Yes, in each of these situations you lose something, blood, money, time, people, and equipment, but the other guy is worse off? You Win!

The "You" in this is mostly people in power, and people now controlling the resources you took from the other guy. Oil, these days. The other guy is both the 'enemy' and the US citizen now having to pay $3.50 a gallon because international tension has driven the price of a barrel of oil up.

Re:Robot laws

[TapeCutter]

"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 have been around for a long time. At one time land owners were allowed to set mantraps to catch poachers, now British troops have standing orders not to shoot at a fleeing enemy. On the whole I think we are becoming more civilized out of necessity since it has become apparent to everyone that it is suicidal for one powefull tribe to conqure another with force alone (UNSC vs Iran's supreme council anyone?).

Re:Robot laws

[TapeCutter]

"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.

Re:Robot laws

[repvik]

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 the latter two nations they are even operating under the aegis of NATO, rather than the UN. Fortunately the Norwegian government has ensured they are properly armed, but (sadly) this hasn't stopped them from killing civilian demonstrators or getting killed themselves.

No, most are a bit more polite. But we're still a peaceful nation. Now, note that while they are equipped with AG-3, they are not attacking. The civilian demonstrators were attacking, and they defended themselves. There was a lot of hubbub around this, as sending norwegian soldiers abroad is very unpopular amongst the general norwegian populace, especially if it leads to someone dying, norwegian or otherwise. And to the "operating under the aegis of NATO"... why do you think Norway did that? Might it have been external pressure from one of the most powerful (and abusive) nations of the world? The norwegian people got into a knot when it was announced that we were sending soldiers (and even moreso when we were going to send F16's).

Wars will last three seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the laws apply when the nanabots dissolve everyone on the planet's surface and re-assemble them into robots which are indistiguishable from a regular human?

Doing battle with visible robots sounds like as fun a sport as outdated conventional warfare.