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Humans, Machines, and Social Cognition
Published in Alessio Plebe, Pietro Perconti, The Future of the Artificial Mind, 2021
Alessio Plebe, Pietro Perconti
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots was launched in 2013 and aims to ban lethal autonomous weapon systems, artificial systems that can kill humans without the explicit intent of others. Such weapons include drones, missile systems and autonomous robots, and can be designed to be defensive or offensive. The most ethically controversial point, of course, is giving an artificial system the ‘choice’ to kill a human individual. But it is the most attractive point from the soldier’s point of view–to eliminate the responsibility of killing other humans. To be honest, it is not a real choice for the robot, but merely the activation of a certain sequence of behavior on condition that a given set of parameters is met. From the human perspective, however, the scene appears completely analogous to a decision by an artificial system to kill one or more humans. It is precisely the detachment of ‘choice’ from human will and responsibility that has led many countries, as well as several non-governmental organizations and over 1,000 scientists, to call for a ban on such technologies, thereby preserving human control over the use of military force. Once the taboo of the ‘artificial choice to kill’ is overcome, the path to weapons without moral responsibility is permanently followed by all those who wish to simultaneously free themselves from moral responsibility and gain efficiency in war scenarios.
Cyber Defence and Countermeasures
Published in Stanislav Abaimov, Maurizio Martellini, Cyber Arms, 2020
Stanislav Abaimov, Maurizio Martellini
In 2013, the International Committee for Robot Arms Control, a founder of the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots, issued a statement endorsed by more than 270 engineers, computing and artificial intelligence experts, roboticists, and professionals from related disciplines that called for a ban on fully autonomous weapons. In the statement, 272 experts from 37 countries say that, “given the limitations and unknown future risks of autonomous robot weapons technology, we call for a prohibition on their development and deployment. Decisions about the application of violent force must not be delegated to machines.”246
Creating a Roadmap – A Plan for Living with Artificial Intelligence
Published in Catriona Campbell, AI by Design, 2022
The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots is a growing global coalition of non-governmental organisations that wish to ban fully autonomous weapons and retain meaningful human control. The campaign was started in 2013 to convince policymakers that LAWS should be banned outright everywhere in the world but is yet to see real talk of a global treaty.
Drone-topia as method
Published in Mobilities, 2020
Donny the Drone is not the only short science fiction film sketching drone-topias. The Future of Life Institute, a non-profit organization backed by AI-skeptics Elon Musk and Stephen Hawkins, commissioned a fictitious short film titled ‘Slaughterbots’ that dramatizes another dystopian possibility of our future with drones (Cussins 2017). The clip shows micro-drones equipped with explosives targeting activists and political opponents via facial recognition. The Campaign to Stop Killer Robots screened this film at the United Nations Convention on Conventional Weapons in November 2017 to warn about the existence of such technology and encourage decision makers to put a ban on lethal autonomous weapons. Highly reminiscent also of the dystopias in Netflix’s Black Mirror (Hildebrand 2018), ‘Slaughterbots’ more readily enunciates the dark drone mobilities and visualities which Donny the Drone leaves equivocally promising and perilous. As Marcuse fittingly observes, ‘art cannot change the world, but it can contribute to changing the consciousness and drives of the men and women who could change the world’ (1979, 32). Herein lies the value of mobile utopia as method, to unearth, assess, assemble, and ultimately mobilize an imaginative and concrete reconstitution of society.