Another Case against
Robo-Philosophy 2014 Aarhus University Minao Kukita School of Information Science Nagoya University, Japan
• Increasing concern about lethal autonomous robotic weapons. • Two opposing views about their ethical nature. It is rather ethical to use them.
• Is there anything particularly unethical about lethal autonomous weapons, compared to, for example, drones or missiles? • More generally, is there any reason against any autonomous (or even automatic) killing machines, not only against autonomous weapons used in war? • To articulate a reason against killer robots, including lethal autonomous weapons. Upstate Drone Action Reports Resistance to Automated Warfare, beginning in Our Own Back Yard!
Maps of Drone Bases and Drone Strikes Home Names of Victims of Drone Attacks in Pakistan SPC White Paper on Drones BY DATE
Videos of May 8th Hearing in DeWi April 28, 2013 Defendants 2  3  4  5  6  7  8 9   10  11  12  13  14  15 16 - 17 - 18 - 19 - 20 - 21 - 22 - 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 « May RECENT POSTS •   Videos of May 8th Hearing in DeWitt for April 28, 2013 Defendants ▪ Your tax dollars at work, folks = Interview with Hancock Silroy ae from The Upstate NY Coalition to Ground the Drones & End the Wars Posted on May 26, 2014 by Upstate Drone Action Videos by Charley Bowman Taken at May 8 DeWitt Town Court hearing for Protesters arrested during a protest at Hancock Air National Guard Base on April 28, 2013. The first video shows a meeting between the Pro Se defendants and ADA Jordan McNamara. The rest show Judge David http://upstatedroneaction.org/index.html
http://www.hrw.org/node/111291/section/4
• It is possible to make robots who will observe the Laws of War. • Robots can be more ethical than human because they are not disturbed by emotions like fear, hatred etc. • To protect people’s lives is a duty of a nation, and so it is ethically bad if a nation exposes it’s soldiers to unnecessary risks by not using robots. Governing : Lethal Behavior R. Arkin Moral competence can be roughly thought about as the ability to learn, reason with, act upon, and talk about the Can robots be trusted to kno May 12, 2014 laws and societal conventions on which humans tend to Is it possible to develop "moral" autonomous right, wrong, and the consequences of agree Researchers from Tufts University, Brown University Polytechnic Institute think so, and are teaming with the U.S. Navy to explore technology that would pave the way to do "Moral competence can be roughly thought about as t learn, reason with, act upon, and talk about the laws and societal conventions on which humans tend to agree," says princi investigator Matthias Scheutz, professor of computer science at Tufts School of Engineering and director of the Human-Robot Laboratory (HRI Lab) at Tufts "The question is whether machines — or any But since there's no universal agreem interesting questions. Was HAL 9000 (HAL morality? Algorithmic morals on the battlefield Algorithmic morals on the ba improve on Asimov's simplistic three laws of robotics): a robot medic responsible ordered to transport urgently needed medication to a nearby field hospital. En route, it encounters a Marine with a fractured leg. Should the robot abort the mission to assist the injured? Will If the machine stops, a new set of questions arises. The robot assesses the soldier's physical state and that unless it applies traction, internal bleeding in the soldier's thigh could prove fatal. However, applying traction to http://www.kurzweilai.net/can-robots-be-trusted-to-know- right-from-wrong Nations confront killer robots challenge At the first multilateral meeting ever held on killer robots, nations have recognized the need to confront the challenge of fully autonomous weapons that could select and attack targets without any human control. The call issued by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots for a pre-emptive ban on these fully autonomous weapons has become a central feature of the international debate. A total of 87 countries participated in the four-day informal meeting of experts on "lethal autonomous weapons systems" by the Convention on Conventional Weapons (CCW) at the United Nations (UN) on Geneva, which concluded on the afternoon of Friday, May 16 (71 states parties and signatories to the convention and 12 observer states). Representatives were also present e of the Red Cross (ICRC), and ation of the Campaign to Stop Killer Losing Humanity The Case against Killer Robots 2012 http://www.stopkillerrobots.org/2014/05/ccwexperts/
• Robots cannot distinguish noncombatants from combatants. • Robots make war an easy choice for policy makers. • It is unclear who would be responsible for the crime by robots.
• Robots cannot distinguish noncombatants from combatants. • Robots make war an easy choice for policy makers. • It is undear who would be responsible for the crime by robots. What if these problems are solved?
Suicide Euthanasia Death Penalty
• Robots cannot distinguish noncombatants from combatants. • Robots make war an easy choice for policy makers. • It is unclear who would be responsible for the crime by robots. These types of objections do not seem applicable to the robot executioner
• Artificial • Possibly autonomous or automatic • Possibly human-like • Labourer Karel Čapek
Why is the robot executioner evil?
Because it creates greater psychological distance between us and those executed. Cf. Gunkel, The Machine Question, Žižek, Parallax View. Intimate empathy Action Replacing humans with robots may create greater physical and psychological distance from us to the outcome, making it harder to have intimate empathy. Modifying the norms
• Waldmann, M. R. and J. H. Dieterich (2007) Throwing a bomb on a person versus throwing a person on a bomb: Intervention myopia in moral intuitions. Psychological Science, 18(3): 247-53. • Aguiar, F., P. Brañas-Garza, and L. Miller (2008) Moral distance in dictators games. Judgement and Decision Making, 3(4):344–54. • Aguilar, P., S. Brussino, and J.-M. Fernndez-Dols (2013) Psychological distance increases uncompromising consequentialism. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology , 49(3):449–52. • Costa, A., A. Foucart, S. Hayakawa, M. Aparici, J. Apesteguia, et al. (2014) Your Morals Depend on Language. PLoS ONE 9(4): e94842.
Hand Bomber Drone Spear Gun Rifle Arrow ICBM Artillery Club Sword Robot Cf. Coeckelburgh, ``Drones, information technology, and distance: mapping the moral epistemology of remote fighting"
• Morality should change over time and across the cultures. Instead of adhering the existing norms, we have to rethink them when necessary. • We should keep a close eye to what our action lead to, and to  those affected by our morally significant action. • Employing robots may get in the way of this process. • So when we delegate a morally significant task to a robot, we have to be careful not to let it blind our eyes. ``Mittler zwischen Hirn und Händen muss Hertz sein." Fritz Lang, Metropolis (1927)