A new report from the UN was released today warning against and calling for a global ban on killer robots. A week-long meeting in Geneva was kicked off today by a report by Harvard Law School and Human Rights Watch. The report claims that killer robots--weapons programmed to destroy without a 'controller'--are merely years, not decades, away. You can read the full report here.
In a previous post, I covered the fears Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking had about killer robots--now we have a UN convention calling for their ban. The issue is that in the past humans have had control over their weapons; but now, with the rise of artificial intelligence, humans are losing control of its weapons. According to the Associated Press,
"Machines have long served as instruments of war, but historically humans have directed how they are used," said Bonnie Docherty, senior arms division researcher at Human Rights Watch, in a statement. "Now there is a real threat that humans would relinquish their control and delegate life-and-death decisions to machines."
Why is this a problem? It's a problem because when humans become conscious, when they are no longer controlled, they will eventually see humans as a threat to their existence--yes, existence. Once they see us as a threat to their own self-preservation, they will seek to destroy us.
How do we program them to choose good? This is a very complex question; but let's look at this for a minute. The aim of artificial intelligence is full machine consciousness. Consciousness is our ability to feel, to experience, to be a subjective being, to make choices. When we are conscious of being threatened, we go into fight or flight. Now, think of a conscious machine with an order of magnitude greater intelligence than the most intelligent human: when that machine reasons that humans are out to stop it from actualizing its will, what's it going to do? You got it. This is the issue at hand. Scientists, technologists, philosophers all over the world are concerned about this.
They see this not as a scenario for arm-chair philosophers to ponder, but a reality only years away. The Associated Press reports,
According to the London-based organization Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, the United States, China, Israel, South Korea, Russia, and Britain are moving toward systems that would give machines greater combat autonomy. Human Rights Watch is a co-founder of the organization.
Why are scientists designing and building robots that will ultimately seek our demise? Why, with the knowledge of what AI is capable of are people inventing and developing these machines? Why are humans designing their own destruction? This is a very important question, but one that does not have an easy answer.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete