The Future of War: Autonomous AI and the Threat of ‘Killer Robots’ - Report
As artificial intelligence (AI) advancements — including cutting-edge robotics and silicon-based image recognition technology — have now pushed the once-fantastic idea of ‘killer robots' onto the global stage, modern autonomous war machines that fire live ammo could soon seek and destroy battlefield combatants, leading many to wonder if there is an ‘off' switch.
Britain and Israel are currently using missiles and drones with autonomous features; such weapons can attack enemy radar, vehicles or ships without human commands.
Technology for weapon systems to autonomously identify and destroy targets has existed for several decades. In the 1980s and 90s, Harpoon and Tomahawk missiles, which could identify targets autonomously, were developed by US war planners. In 2003, the US Army developed the Counter-Rocket, Artillery and Mortar system (C-RAM), a set of systems to detect incoming rockets, artillery and mortar rounds while they are still airborne and alert a human operator. Such a system allows the operator — with the press of a button — to destroy the incoming threat with ammunition that self-destructs in the air to minimize injuring civilians on the ground.
During the 1947-1991 Cold War between the Soviet Union and the US, the US Navy used its Phalanx weapon system for defense against anti-ship missiles and helicopters, linking sensors on fleet ships and aircraft to single out airborne threats and attack them with shipboard missiles, all without the intervention of human operators.
Robert Work, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington, recently told the New York Post that a true robot killing marching could be defined as a lethal autonomous weapon that decides — based on its programming — who and what to destroy.
"There's a type of fire-and-forget weapon where the weapon itself decides, ‘Okay, this is what I see happening in the battlefield, and I think I'm going to have to take out this particular tank because I think this tank is the command tank,'" Work noted, describing his definition of a true independent weapons platform.
Currently, the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has a Collaborative Operations in Denied Environment (CODE) program focused on developing software that allows groups of drones to work in teams.
According to the DARPA website, "DARPA's CODE program aims to overcome these limitations with new algorithms and software for existing unmanned aircraft that would extend mission capabilities and improve US forces' ability to conduct operations in denied or contested airspace. CODE researchers seek to create a modular software architecture beyond the current state of the art that is resilient to bandwidth limitations and communications disruptions yet compatible with existing standards and amenable to affordable retrofit into existing platforms."
https://sputniknews.com/science/201811181069917338-autonomous-al-threat-of-killer-robots/
沒有留言:
發佈留言