![]() ![]() A robust network of NGOs has successfully urged the UN to convene member states to agree to a similar ban on killer robots and other weapons that can act on their own, without direct human control, to destroy a target (also known as lethal autonomous weapon systems, or Laws). The community of nations has forbidden the use of blinding-laser technology, too. By the mid-20th century, international conventions banned biological and chemical weapons. In the past, nation states have come together to prohibit particularly gruesome or terrifying new weapons. Software modelling may eliminate even that barrier, allowing virtual battle-tested simulations to inspire future military investments. Expense is the chief impediment to a great power experimenting with such potentially destructive machines. It doesn’t take much reflection to realise that such an experiment has the potential to go wildly out of control. When a leading computer scientist mentioned a similar scenario to the US’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa), calling it a “robot Jurassic Park”, a leader there called it “feasible”. Losers would be scrapped and winners would spawn, until some evolved to be the best killing machines. A Russian science fiction story from the 60s, Crabs on the Island, described a kind of Hunger Games for AIs, in which robots would battle one another for resources. The book cannot be written off as a techno-military fantasy: it includes hundreds of footnotes documenting the development of each piece of hardware and software it describes.Īdvances in the modelling of robotic killing machines are no less disturbing. A recent novel by PW Singer and August Cole, set in a near future in which the US is at war with China and Russia, presented a kaleidoscopic vision of autonomous drones, lasers and hijacked satellites. Who knows how many other noxious creatures are now models for avant garde military theorists. Photograph: Future of Life Institute/YouTube It is only one of many “ biomimetic”, or nature-imitating, weapons that are on the horizon.Ī still from Slaughterbots. One “microsystems collaborative” has already released Octoroach, an “extremely small robot with a camera and radio transmitter that can cover up to 100 metres on the ground”. The US air force has predicted a future in which “Swat teams will send mechanical insects equipped with video cameras to creep inside a building during a hostage standoff”. But when it comes to the future of war, the line between science fiction and industrial fact is often blurry. Some military experts argued that Slaughterbots – which was made by the Future of Life Institute, an organisation researching existential threats to humanity – sensationalised a serious problem, stoking fear where calm reflection was required. And existing defences are weak or nonexistent. ![]() The lesson that the film, Slaughterbots, is trying to impart is clear: tiny killer robots are either here or a small technological advance away. The students scream in terror, trapped inside, as the drones attack with deadly force. The killer robots flood in through windows and vents. In a few seconds, we cut to a college classroom. They flip a switch, and the drones swarm out like bats from a cave. They open the van’s back doors, and the whining sound of quadcopter drones crescendos. ![]() Two menacing men stand next to a white van in a field, holding remote controls. ![]()
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