The US Army wants to turn tanks into AI-powered killing machines
The US Army wants to turn tanks into AI-powered killing machines
A new initiative by the US Army suggests “another significant step towards lethal autonomous weapons,” warns a leading artificial-intelligence researcher who has called for a ban on so-called “killer robots.”
The
Army Contracting Command has called on potential vendors in industry and
academia to submit ideas to help build its Advanced Targeting and Lethality
Automated System (ATLAS), which a Defense
Department solicitation says will use artificial intelligence and
machine learning to give ground-combat vehicles autonomous targeting
capabilities. This will allow weapons to “acquire, identify, and engage targets
at least 3X faster than the current manual process,” according to the notice.
Stuart
Russell, a professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and a highly regarded
AI expert, tells Quartz he is deeply concerned about the idea of tanks and
other land-based fighting vehicles eventually having the capability to fire on
their own.
“It
looks very much as if we are heading into an arms race where the current ban on
full lethal autonomy”—a section
of US military law that mandates some level of human interaction when
actually making the decision to fire—”will be dropped as soon as it’s
politically convenient to do so,” says Russell.
The
Defense Department contracting officer overseeing the solicitation did not
immediately respond to a request for further details on ATLAS. An Army public
affairs officer said he would get back to Quartz with a comment about the
program; this article will be updated when it is received.
In
2017, Russell appeared
in a video produced by the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots that
described a dystopian future brought on by autonomous military weaponry that campaign
leaders say would “decide who lives and dies, without further human
intervention, which crosses a moral threshold.”
The
group, a coalition
of non-governmental organizations working to ban autonomous weapons and
maintain “meaningful human control over the use of force,” cautions that
letting machines select and attack targets could lead the world into “a
destabilizing robotic arms race.”
The longer nations take to start negotiating a treaty to
ban fully autonomous weapons the stronger @BanKillerRobots
is going to get. Watch this space 
#CCWUN
#CCWUN
Preserving the human element
ATLAS
will use an algorithm to detect and identify targets and “parts of the fire
control process” will be automated, explains the Army’s call for white
papers. This means a person will always be the one actually making the
decision to fire, as required by law, says Paul
Scharre, director of the Technology and National Security Program at
the Center for a New American Security, a bipartisan think tank in Washington,
DC.
There
are hundreds of autonomous and semi-autonomous missile-defense
systems now in use, according to researchers. ATLAS would be the first
use of such weaponry by ground combat vehicles, according to Scharre.
The
system would ideally “maximize the amount of time for human response and allow
the human operator to make a decision,” Scharre says. “And then once the human
makes a decision, to fire accurately.”
This
can reduce the possibility of civilian casualties, fratricide, and other
unintended consequences. It will also keep US soldiers safer on the
battlefield, Scharre says.
“Anytime
you can shave off even fractions of a second, that’s valuable,” says Scharre.
“A lot of engagement decisions in warfare are very compressed in time. If
you’re in a tank and you see the enemy’s tank, they probably can also see you.
And if you’re in range to hit them, they’re probably in range to hit you.”
The fear of autonomous killer machines
Last
fall, UN
secretary general António Guterres said the “prospect of machines with
the discretion and power to take human life is morally repugnant.” More than 25
countries have called for an ban on autonomous weapons, a measure that
explicitly requires human control when it comes to lethal force. However, the
US, South Korea, Russia, Israel, and Australia have
pushed back strongly and defense contractors including Boeing, Lockheed
Martin, BAE
Systems, and Raytheon continue
to invest heavily in unmanned weapons development.
Scharre
says the current crop of autonomous weaponry, such as ATLAS, is akin to
blind-spot monitors on cars, which use lights in side-view mirrors blink to
warn a driver not to change lanes. “It would ideally reduce the chances of
missing targets, which is sort of good all around,” says Scharre.
Still,
opponents (who include
Elon Musk) fear the lack of concrete, universally accepted guidelines
surrounding autonomous weapons and say only
a total ban will prevent eventual catastrophe.
As Article
36, a UK-based NGO that works to “prevent the unintended, unnecessary
or unacceptable harm caused by certain weapons,” pleads on its website: “Action
by states is needed now to develop an understanding over what is unacceptable
when it comes to the use of autonomous weapons systems, and to prohibit these
activities and development through an international treaty.”
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