Anybody want to be the beta tester?
Robot warriors will get a guide to ethics
By Eric Bland
Smart missiles, rolling robots, and flying drones currently controlled by humans, are being used on the battlefield more every day. But what happens when humans are taken out of the loop, and robots are left to make decisions, like who to kill or what to bomb, on their own?
Ronald Arkin, a professor of computer science at Georgia Tech, is in the first stages of developing an "ethical governor," a package of software and hardware that tells robots when and what to fire. His book on the subject, "Governing Lethal Behavior in Autonomous Robots," comes out this month. He argues not only can robots be programmed to behave more ethically on the battlefield, they may actually be able to respond better than human soldiers.
what could possibly go wrong!
Human soldiers...or that gang of cops they fired for jumping on a guy who was thrown from his car after leading police on a wild ride...are all just "human". Some times they go nuts, a few already are nuts. All robots can add to the problems you get in using lethal force is a bit of consistency of outcomes. You think they would make the code for these kinder gentler robokillers open source? I would demand it but it will wind up classified if it ever gets funded.