Moral doubts over real life Terminators

The growing use of combat robots threaten a Terminator- like reality, says a British defence report. Photo / Supplied

A new generation of combat robots threatens to make war more likely as militaries embark on "an involuntary journey towards a Terminator-like reality", a report for British military chiefs has warned.

A study by the Ministry of Defence, reported in the Guardian, refers directly to the 1984 film The Terminator, in which humans are hunted by cyborg killing machines.

It says the pace of technological development is accelerating at such a rate that Britain must quickly establish a policy on what will constitute "acceptable machine behaviour".

"It is essential that before unmanned systems become ubiquitous (if it is not already too late) ... we ensure that, by removing some of the horror, or at least keeping it at a distance, we do not risk losing our controlling humanity and make war more likely."

The report says "the recent extensive use of unmanned aircraft over Pakistan and Yemen may already herald a new era".

It notes that "feelings are likely to run high as armed systems acquire more autonomy" in war zones such as Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Insurgents "gain every time a mistake is made", and can cast themselves "in the role of underdog and the West as a cowardly bully that is unwilling to risk his own troops, but is happy to kill remotely".

The concept of "fighting from barracks" or the "remote warrior" raises such questions as whether a person operating drones - sometimes from thousands of kilometres away - then "walking the streets of his home town after a shift" is a legitimate target as a combatant.

"Do we fully understand the psychological effects on remote operators of conducting war at a distance?"

For war to be moral, as well as legal, the report says "it must link the killing of enemies with an element of self-sacrifice, or at least risk to oneself".

"The role of the human in the loop has, before now, been a legal requirement which we now see being eroded," the ministry's report warns.

"What is the role of the human from a moral and ethical standpoint in automatic systems?

"To a robotic system, a school bus and a tank are the same - merely algorithms in a program ... the robot has no sense of ends, ways and means, no need to know why it is engaging a target."

However, the report also identifies advantages of an unmanned weapons system, such as preventing the potential loss of aircrew lives, which mean it "is thus in itself morally justified".

It adds: "Robots cannot be emotive, cannot hate.

"A robot cannot be driven by anger to carry out illegal actions such as those at My Lai [the massacre by US troops of hundreds of unarmed civilians in South Vietnam in March 1968]. In theory, therefore, autonomy should enable more ethical and legal warfare."

FUTURE SHOCKS

* US-made "Reaper" unmanned aircraft controlled by joystick from remote locations by satellite link. It can carry guided missiles and bombs, fly for more than 18 hours and has a range of 5800km. Used by Britain and USA.

* Unmanned machinegun posts are used by South Korea in the Demilitarised Zone and Israel near the Gaza Strip. The guard towers are operated remotely by the military.

* The US military is developing tracked vehicles mounted with machineguns. While they are remote-controlled, tests are being done on enabling them to roam autonomously around a battlefield, with a human controlling the weapons.

* The development of artificial intelligence has reached a stage where computers make limited autonomous decisions and distinguish individual humans. Battlefield use of such technology is still far in the future.