Designed for Death: Robots, Control and War
Channel: Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies
Date: 05/11/2022

Steve Umbrello spoke to the IEET/AEC about the ethics of control systems for autonomous lethal robots on Nov 2, 2022.

Autonomous weapons systems, often referred to as ‘killer robots’, have been a hallmark of popular imagination for decades. However, with the inexorable advance of artificial intelligence systems (AI) and robotics, killer robots are quickly becoming a reality. These lethal technologies can learn, adapt, and potentially make life and death decisions on the battlefield with little-to-no human involvement. This naturally leads to not only legal but ethical concerns as to whether we can meaningful control such machines, and if so, then how. Such concerns are made even more poignant by the ever-present fear that something may go wrong, and the machine may carry out some action(s) violating the ethics or laws of war.

Steven Umbrello, author of "Designed for Death: Controlling Killer Robots," discusses some ethical dilemmas that result from an increased use of autonomous systems and how a possible requirement for human control can be understood and applied from an ethical perspective. Steven Umbrello currently serves as the Managing Director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Steven serves a postdoctoral feelow at the University of Delft, and holds a PhD from the University of Turin where he also teaches. He studied philosophy of science and technology at the University of Toronto and ethics at the University of Edinburgh. 

IEET: http://ieet.org

Applied Ethics Center at UMB: https://www.umb.edu/ethics

JEET Call for Papers on Military Tech Ethics: https://jeet.ieet.org/index.php/home/announcement/view/1

Book: https://trivent-publishing.eu/home/139-184-designed-for-death-controlling-killer-robots.html

The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies is a nonprofit think tank which promotes ideas about how technological progress can increase freedom, happiness, and human flourishing in democratic societies. We believe that technological progress can be a catalyst for positive human development so long as we ensure that technologies are safe and equitably distributed. We call this a technoprogressive orientation.