Militaries Are Rushing to Replace Human Soldiers with AI-Powered Robots. That Will Be Disastrous, Experts Warn.
Humans have control of military drones, but some experts think cutting the puppet strings is inevitable as forces seek to gain the upper hand in battles.
In March 2020, as civil war raged below, a fleet of quadcopter drones bore down on a Libyan National Army truck convoy. The kamikaze drones, designed to detonate their explosive payloads against enemy targets, hunted down and destroyed several trucks—trucks driven by human beings. Chillingly, the drones conducted the attack entirely on their own—no humans gave the order to attack.
The rise of the armed robot, whether on land, sea, or in the air, has increasingly pushed humans away from the front lines, replacing them with armed robots. Humans still retain ultimate control over whether a robot can open fire on the battlefield, despite this potential disconnect. However, recent advances in artificial intelligence could sever the last link between man and machine. If that happens, the cold logic of AI robots would be the only factor that determines who lives and dies on the battlefield. Is this unsettling step inevitable, and will real humans be anywhere near the front line in the next war?
Today’s military drones allow human personnel to carry out vital missions, often from tens to even thousands of miles away. An iconic example involves airmen sitting in air conditioned, virtual cockpits at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada while controlling armed MQ-9 Reaper drones half a world away. The rise of artificial intelligence allows these drones to be more autonomous—capable of making limited decisions about navigation and route-planning. We live in an age when AI-powered self-driving cars read signs and drive, making critical decisions that could injure or kill the humans around them. Giving robots the ability to make life or death decisions on the battlefield doesn’t really seem all that far behind.
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