Killer robots

Business Daily

BBC

Business

4.4 • 816 Ratings

🗓️ 17 August 2021

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Are these the future of modern warfare and how concerned should we be? There are efforts to limit the development of these weapons. More than 50 nations met at the UN in Geneva this month to discuss a possible treaty. But neither Russia nor the United States have expressed any willingness to support the treaty. Ed Butler speaks to Professor Noel Sharkey who's been campaigning against the development of these weapons for 14 years and asked him how close any type of agreement was. Evanna Hu, CEO of AI firm, Omelas, and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, says this technology is now at the forefront of many countries' weapons development. And George Rey is a retired Lieutenant Commander in the US navy. He now works with private sector defence contractors supporting the development of autonomous weapons systems for the department of defence.

(Picture credit: CARL COURT/AFP via Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi there, I'm Ed Butler. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. Today, killer robots,
0:06.7	are they going to become the norm of modern warfare?
0:10.3	Technologically, we have advanced significantly in the past five years using the systems that are faster than the pace that humans can think.
0:21.6	How scary is that? Or do we just have to adjust to the new technology of war?
0:27.2	What we're all looking for is how do we develop the trust factors with its autonomy,
0:33.8	established and programmed based on the rules of engagement when put into a fight.
0:40.3	Autonomous killing machines, today's Business Daily from the BBC.
0:53.3	Some uplifting music music feels a little out of place when you see what it's promoting.
1:02.4	This corporate ad is for Cargo 2. It's a Turkish-made quadcopter drone. It's equipped, it says, with advanced artificial intelligence that can not only track
1:13.1	battlefield targets, but can also select and destroy them by means of a clever algorithm. The subtitles claim
1:19.9	it provides a precision strike, a group of shop dummies stand in a field to prove the point. The drone
1:26.6	zooms in and explodes.
1:34.3	According to the UN, this weapon may have been deployed already during fighting between
1:39.2	Turkish-backed government forces and rebels in Libya last year. That would have made this the first time a weapon had remotely,
1:46.6	using artificial intelligence, identified and killed soldiers on the battlefield.
1:51.2	Noel Sharkey is a professor of robotics and AI in the United Kingdom.
1:55.3	He also runs a global campaign aimed at limiting autonomous weapon systems.
2:00.5	The point about this one is that it will select the targets and apply violent force
2:06.0	without a human looking down a camera and saying this target is appropriate, this is a
2:11.5	correct target.
2:13.0	So the idea of a machine being delegated with the decision to kill. A machine can't discriminate
2:19.3	effectively, which is one of the cornerstones of the Geneva Conventions. A machine can't
	...

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