Robots Don't Kill People, People do

Rod Furlan twittered a day in the life of a Singularity University student. At 12:08:21 PM he asked, "When a robot kills, who pulled the trigger?"

This question cycles through the public consciousness every year or so and is well illustrated by the South African National Defence Force's 'little' accident with an automated Oerlikon GDF-005 (it sprayed 500 35mm anti-aircraft shells around its firing position, killing 9 and wounding 11).

Oerlikon GDF-005, A.K.A. the T-001

At the moment no one seriously considers (except maybe the Koreans) holding the auto-turret responsible for the killings, because the system that controls the mechanical stuff isn't complicated enough to be plausibly sentient.

...as backed up by empirical research by Friedman and Millett (1997), and by Moon and Nass (1998), humans do attribute responsibility to computers. Of course, that we may be inclined to blame computers does not entail that we are justified in so doing. Although computer systems may clearly be causally responsible for the injuries and deaths that resulted from their flawed operation, it is not so clear that they can be held morally responsible for these injuries or deaths.

However, some people are really excited about the possibility that computers will eventually (sooner rather than later, yay!) be complicated enough for us to blame things on them. Without going into the background on this topic, the basic requirement for something to be responsible for its actions is that it be consciously aware of the difference between right and wrong. Since computers just do what they are programmed to do, and have no ability to understand the concept of "should," they are not responsible for anything. Computers just follow orders.

Computers totally would have let the Nuremberg Defendents off the hook.

The human brain is a system, and a computer is a system, so it is plausible that computer systems can increase in complexity and reach a par with the human brain. So, at some point we will probably have to deal with computers that actually do understand morality. Since we'll still be human, we'll probably give them a gun and tell them to go kill our enemies. However, before we can pull the "the robot did it on its own" card, we will be forced to use old-fashioned computers to kill people.

Dr. Ronald Arkin wrote a book about this, and did a few interviews, and worked on a prototype computer-based morality system. His thesis is that robots can be more moral on the battlefield than humans because they are capable of making fewer mistakes. They won't make decisions based on fear, anger or recklessness and they will evaluate every situation on its own merits instead of suffering from 'scenario fulfillment' and jumping to conclusions.

From a systems standpoint it seems fairly obvious that computers will eventually be more complicated than humans, and at that point they will probably have to start taking responsibility for their own actions (and for cleaning up that pig-stie they call a room). Until then, however, we humans will have to continue taking responsibility for robots that are put in increasingly complicated situations. Dealing with this transition period will require innovations that have not appeared yet. At some point it becomes difficult to hold a person responsible for the actions of a system they own, but that they can't possibly understand fully enough to predict its actions in all situations. Isaac Asimov built part of his career exploring the ways a robot could do totally unexpected things while blindly obeying the 3 Laws of Robotics.

We need an innovative way to interpret who is responsible for the actions autonomous (but unconscious) systems take. Even when some computers truly are unequivocally responsible for their own actions, the vast majority of computers systems will continue to be unconscious. Inevitably, some of the moral computers that we declare responsible for their own actions will assume control of non-moral computers that still aren't responsible for their own actions.

The question is, 'in the future, when a moral computer tells a non-moral computer to kill, who can I sue?'

Robots are better in conception than reality

Few topics inspire as much excitement (among a particular crowd) as robots and, more specifically, the future of robotics. I have to admit a particular fascination with this subject, partly because robots are pretty cool, but mostly because the subject covers such a wide range of possibilities. Will robots become our overlords? Will robots consume the Earth and everything on it as raw materials? Will robots and humans live together in harmony forever? Will robots become grim killing machines with little subtlety and less emotion? Will they always be a disappointment?

Mike Treder writes, "But what if, instead, the recursively improving computer brains of robot warriors allow them to become enlightened and to see the horror of warfare for what it is -- to recognize the ridiculousness of building more and better (and more costly) machines only to command them to destroy each other? What if they gave a robot war and nobody came?"

In contrast, Jordan Pollack writes, "Most people's expectations of robots are driven by fantasy [...] We have to master either software engineering or self-organization before our most intelligent designers can dare play in the same league as Mother Nature [...] In case you missed them, today's most popular robots are ATMs and computer printers."

The robot apocalypse will be underwhelming.

They both bring up good points, but Pollack's is much more in line with reality. Robots inspire such heights of fancy that one cannot distinguish the history of the concept from the history of people jumping to some absurd conclusions. For example, South Korea is officially writing up a code of ethics to protect robots from human abuse. So, they've jumped right past questions of whether or not robots can even be abused and are making sure they are protected just in case. This is an interesting thing for a country's government to be throwing their resources and prestige behind considering there are plenty of people in their own country, a certain nearby country, and all over the world who are being abused by people right now. It indicates that 1) the level of absurdity of the things politicians do in South Korea is equal to the level of absurdity of the things politicians do in America or 2) they are more worried about hurting the hypothetical feelings of robots than the actual feelings of humans.

Cardiologist robot is procrastinating.

This sort of thing has been going on for a long time in one form or another. Right here in the States non-professionals are arguing over whether or not robots should be held responsible for their actions, while the military itself is dragging its feet over even defining the requirements. (if the requirements are not defined then no progress can be made)

People have always been worried that "the military" will jump feet first into autonomous killing machines, laughing manically the entire time and possibly dying ironically when their monstrous creation turns on them. The reality is that military professionals take their job very seriously and are incredibly reticent to give a machine the authority to do anything at all. Anyone who has had to deal with the results of lowest-bid government contracting is reluctant to trust anything built by a government contractor. Giving it a gun and orders to "Git 'em!" is the last thing any professional will do.

Pictured: Unlikely.

Additionally, why would the military ever embrace autonomous soldiers? If they ever worked correctly they would simply take the soldiers' jobs. The only incentive the military has for incorporating robots is to expand into capabilities they did not have before (reconnaissance) and to protect their own soldiers lives while increasing the danger to the enemy's soldiers. And what do we see? That the thousands of robots being used right now are gathering information and defusing bombs. That is the reality of the situation. As communication links improve you might see teleoperated fighting robots, but I do not think autonomous soldiers will ever be embraced by the military.