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| Campaign to stop killer robots (Image: Flickr User - Matthew Stokes) |
By Lucas Bento
Before you rule out so-called killer robots, consider their applications in counter-terrorism.
The prospect of intelligence triumphing over ignorance is always encouraging.
As a secular method to understand and explain the world, science can reveal gaps and holes in religious dogma, and by doing so, challenge extremist religious beliefs that do not hold up to observable experiments. As the world becomes increasingly networked (thanks in part to science), access to scientific knowledge may disrupt the very belief systems that are exploited and manipulated to recruit and motivate terrorists.
But it could take years if not decades before science as a knowledge system infiltrates past the authoritarian walls of religious fundamentalism.
In a more practical sense, applied science, and particularly artificial intelligence, may provide more immediate tactical benefits.
Enter killer robots, artificially intelligent lethal machines capable of selecting and engaging targets without human intervention.
Killer robots have received considerable bad press in recent months. Many scientists, nongovernmental organizations, and states [PDF] have called for a preemptive ban on their development and eventual use on the battlefield. They fear that lethal autonomous robots may increase the likelihood of war and could one day pose an existential threat to humankind.
This anxiety is nothing new. In an article published in 1863 entitled “Darwin among the machines,” English writer Samuel Butler argued that the “the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants.” The author recommended that as a precaution, mankind should return to the “primeval condition of the race.”
Read the full story at The Diplomat