Pentagon To Spend $1 Billion Developing Killer Robots

 The Pentagon reportedly plans to spend more than $1 billion over the  next few years developing advanced robots for military applications that  are expected to complement soldiers on the battlefield, and potentially  even replace some of them. Army Project Manager Bryan McVeigh told Bloomberg that over 800 robots have already entered the ranks in the past two years. 

“Within five years, I have no doubt there will be robots in every  Army formation. We’re going from talking about robots to actually  building and fielding programs. This is an exciting time to be working  on robots with the Army,” McVeigh said. 

McVeigh and other military agents celebrate the addition of robots  into their ranks as a cost-saver and tool to aid them on difficult  missions, but humanitarians fear that this could desensitize powerful  nations from the consequences of war even more than they already are  with the use of drones or far-reaching missiles. 

There are currently no public reports of autonomous killing machines,  as the military insists that all of these weapons will be operated by  humans, but many experts are concerned that it is only a matter of time  until the technology is taken to that level.  

“It seems inevitable that technology is taking us to a point  where countries will face the question of whether to delegate lethal  decision-making to machines,” said Paul Scharre of the Center for a New American Security. 

Last year, more than 100 tech experts, including Elon Musk, sent a  letter to the UN urging the ban of autonomous robotic weapons. “Once developed, lethal autonomous weapons will permit armed  conflict to be fought at a scale greater than ever, and at timescales  faster than humans can comprehend. These can be weapons of terror,  weapons that despots and terrorists use against innocent populations,  and weapons hacked to behave in undesirable ways,” the letter warned. At least 26 countries have made similar calls for a ban on fully autonomous weapons, according to the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots.  

“If you buy into the notion that it’s a moral and humanitarian  issue—that you have machines making life-and-death decisions on the  battlefield—then it’s a very simple issue. People have a sense of  revulsion over this,” said Steve Goose, director of Human Rights Watch’s arms division and a co-founder of the campaign. Goose also pointed out how this could make it easier for members of  the military to kill people, entirely removing them from the  consequences of war. 

“There’s a value of someone being able to appreciate the human  consequences of war. A world without that could be potentially more  harmful. If we went to war and no one slept uneasy at night, what does  that say about us?” he said. It is likely that we are in the early days of a military robotics  arms race. 

This week it was also reported that India is building a  formidable artificial intelligence division in their military as well,  even openly admitting the development of autonomous robots. Ajay Kumar, the secretary of the Defense Production Department in the Indian Defense Ministry, told the Times of India that his agency was “developing intelligent, autonomous robotic systems.” 

“The world is moving towards AI-driven warfare. India is also  taking necessary steps to prepare our armed forces because AI has the  potential to have a transformative impact on national security. The  government has set up the AI task force to prepare the roadmap for it,” he said. 

India expects that they will have AI integrated into their military  within the next two years, and despite the fact that the U.S. military  claims that they are not working on autonomous weapons, it is not like  them to allow anyone else to get the upper hand in an arms race.