U.S. Military vs. Out-of-Control Killer Robots

During a confirmation hearing with the Senate Armed Services Committee, General Paul Selva advocated "keeping the ethical rules of war in place lest we unleash on humanity a set of robots that we don’t know how to control."

Selva, America’s second-highest ranking military officer, made his remarks in response to a question from Senator Gary Peters (D-MI). Peters asked Selva about a Department of Defense directive which requires that a human make the final call on whether to kill a human by autonomous weapons—for example, before a drone can kill a human, a human must give the ok.

The DoD directive is due to expire later this year, and Peters warned that America’s enemies wouldn’t hesitate to use the killer-robot technology.

"Our adversaries often do not consider the same moral and ethical issues that we consider each and every day," Peters told Selva.

"I don’t think it’s reasonable for us to put robots in charge of whether or not we take a life," Selva told the committee during the confirmation hearing for his reappointment as the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"There will be a raucous debate in the department about whether or not we take humans out of the decision to take lethal action," Selva said, but added that he remained in favor of “keeping that restriction.”

The General’s views conflict with those of the Navy, who seeks to pursue autonomous drones. But Selva’s assessments are largely in line with a group of entrepreneurs and scientists - including Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak - who signed an open letter in July 2015 calling for a "ban on offensive autonomous weapons beyond meaningful human control":

"Autonomous weapons are ideal for tasks such as assassinations, destabilizing nations, subduing populations, and selectively killing a particular ethnic group. We therefore believe that a military AI arms race would not be beneficial for humanity. There are many ways in which AI can make battlefields safer for humans, especially civilians, without creating new tools for killing people.”

While Selva condemns autonomous killing technology, he still supports the Pentagon researching how to defend against it.

The ban "doesn’t mean that we don’t have to address the development of those kinds of technologies and potentially find their vulnerabilities and exploit those vulnerabilities," Selva told the committee.

The Pentagon’s stance on robots taking their own life was not discussed.

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— Josh Herman

(Photo Credit: ArmyTechnology.mil / Creative Commons)