Politicians call for ban on 'killer robots' and the curbing of AI weapons
- Reference: 1714458425
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2024/04/30/kill_killer_robots_now/
- Source link:
"This is, I believe, the Oppenheimer moment of our generation," Alexander Schallenberg said at the start of the Vienna conference entitled 'Humanity at the Crossroads: Autonomous Weapons Systems and the Challenge of Regulation.'
"Autonomous weapons systems will soon fill the world's battlefields. We already see this with AI enabled drones and AI based target selection,” he said. You can watch the full session below.
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[2]Youtube Video
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Schallenberg’s comments come just weeks after the US Air Force and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) detailed efforts to put AI in control of [5]tanks and even an [6]F-16 fighter jet. As we've previously reported, efforts to [7]expand the autonomy of weapons platforms has been under way for years.
Schallenberg sees AI as the biggest revolution in warfare since the invention of gunpowder but feels it is far more dangerous. With the next logical step in military AI development involving removing humans from the decision-making process, he believes there's no time to waste.
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"Now is the time to agree on international rules and norms to ensure human control," he said. "At least let us make sure that the most profound and far-reaching decision: who lives and who dies remains in the hands of humans and not of machines."
Schallenberg emphasized that he isn't against the use of AI, a perspective shared by many panelists at the conference, but that it's important to understand the technology's implications as a weapon of war.
Echoing this sentiment, Hasan Mahmud, Bangladesh's minister of foreign affairs, noted AI has tremendous potential to advance science and help humanity, and argued such roles should attract more efforts than automating violence.
Don't dump the human!
One of the chief concerns raised by panelists related to accountability for the use of AI in warfare, if humans are no longer involved in the decision to use violence.
"We cannot ensure compliance with international humanitarian law anymore if there is no human control over the use of these weapons," said Mirjana Spoljaric Egger, the president of the International Committee of the Red Cross, before impressing on listeners the need to act quickly.
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Today even the most sophisticated AI models aren't perfect and have been shown to make mistakes and exhibit bias, Schallenberg said, highlighting Spoljaric Egger's concerns.
"At the end of the day, who's responsible if something goes wrong," he asked. "The commander? The operator? The software developer?"
[10]US Air Force says AI-controlled F-16 fighter jet has been dogfighting with humans
[11]DARPA's latest toy is a 20-foot, 12-ton tank that drives itself
[12]China scientists talk of powering hypersonic weapon with cheap Nvidia chip
[13]AI models just love escalating conflict to all-out nuclear war
The proliferation of AI weapons was another issue raised by panelists. The argument is that where technologies like nuclear weapons require immense resources and technological know-how to harness, weaponizing AI could prove far easier.
"It probably very quickly will end up in the hands of non-governmental actors or terrorist groups," Schallenberg warned.
Another concern, raised Estonian programmer Jaan Tallinn, was that AI models may evolve to the point at which they are able to accurately distinguish human beings based on their ethnicity.
"When autonomous weapons become able to perfectly distinguish between humans, they will make it significantly easier to carry out genocides and target the killings that seek specific human characteristics," he said.
For Tallinn, AI poses an insurmountable risk to the human species if steps to control its use, particularly in military applications, are not taken. He worries that accidental errors by autonomous weapons could spark even wider wars.
But, as Eivind Van Peterson, Norway's state secretary of foreign affairs, pointed out, AI is not immune to international law, it's just that statutes weren't written with the technology in mind.
"The challenge in front of us, first and foremost, is to better establish how the existing rules apply to such weapons systems," he said.
"[With AI] we are trying to regulate the future."
As to whether the world can come together to prevent AI weapons from closing the loop, the general consensus among panelists at the event was cautious optimism.
"So, certainly, a small subset of humans are making decisions that do undermine our future species, but we're definitely capable of acting preventatively," Tallinn said, emphasizing that the human race has, despite its habit of getting drawn into arms races, done so in the past.
"We have acted preventatively on banning blinding laser weapons, not to mention constraints on biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons," he said.
As to what happens if we don't act, Schallenberg evoked the kinds of dystopian futures depicted in popular science fiction. "We all know the movies: Terminator, The Matrix, and whatever they're called. We don't want killer robots." ®
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[5] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/25/darpa_autonomous_tank/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/18/darpa_f16_flight/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/27/us_military_maven_ai_used/
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[10] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/18/darpa_f16_flight/
[11] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/25/darpa_autonomous_tank/
[12] https://www.theregister.com/2024/04/16/china_nvidia_hypersonic_weapon/
[13] https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/06/ai_models_warfare/
[14] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
" will it finally dawn on us that killing each other solves no problems"
It is the most tried-and-tested way to solve a problem, especially if that problem is another human. The way of rulers since time dot. It is the best problem fixer out there.
And really, you should be a little more proud of that. No man kills like a Western man. King of the castle. Damn, we might even work out how to kill the whole universe(think there is an Asimov short story about that).
AI killer robots are going to be fantastic. I want one.
Mistake
If you ban these robots, then your enemy will accelerate development.
We all know well from the history how it ends when you abandon possession of a powerful weapon that could defend your country or act as a deterrent.
So if someone calls for a ban, most likely they work for the enemy.
It's a bit like in 1939 asking the world to introduce controls and regulation to limit the use of tanks in the battlefield.
Countries with dictators don't care.
Another issue here is that the Austrian body politic became corrupted by Russian money - thinking back to when it came out a major political party was going to use Russian money to buy a major media outlet to push far-right narratives - and here we have a call, from an Austrian politician, to lay off using AI in battlefields, when Russia/Putin is doing everything they can to do so, couldn't care less about calls not to do so, and would love it if the West decided of its own accord not to do so.
Just to add, Russia promotes any content that creates divide and creates economic disadvantage for their adversary.
Like here in the UK they massively promoted all green initiatives, protests, anti-fracking etc. and fearful politicians just go along with it, so now we have the most expensive energy in the region and our economy is collapsing. All while making no difference to climate.
The moment the ability to pull the trigger can be turned over to an algorithm without human intervention... Well, yeah, we knew it was coming, for better or worse.
The argument of they have it so we have to have it, is, unfortunately a strong one. Humans with spears fared better than humans with clubs, and over those with nothing.
There are already autonomous kill systems out there in circulation so, putting the politics in the open is probably for the better. I am not convinced anything other than a global agreement to prevent their development will do anything of course.
When, after around two million years as as a species, will it finally dawn on us that killing each other solves no problems? The specific way we choose to do it is less of a question, except that the tools get ever more expensive.