Ethics Report on Autonomous Military Robots to be Released
February 2, 2009 | Source: KurzweilAI
The Ethics + Emerging Technologies Group at Cal Poly will release a major report, “Autonomous Military Robots: Risk, Ethics, and Design,” Monday, authored by several of its faculty researchers and funded by the US Department of Navy, Office of Naval Research (ONR).
The 100+ page preliminary report addresses current and predicted states of robotics, different programming approaches (top-down, bottom-up, etc.), just-war challenges, legal responsibility, and other ethical concerns from accidental deaths to proliferation to robot rights.
“The public is generally surprised when they hear how great a role robots are playing in the military,” explained Dr. Patrick Lin, director of the research group and co-author of the report. “But there hasn’t been much dialogue about the risks posed by these machines, especially as they are expected to be given more autonomy or a greater ability to make choices on their own, such as attack decisions. So we commend the ONR for their foresight in supporting our investigation.”
