The Challenges Of Regulating Autonomous Weapons
canada goose coats on sale The United Nations recently held meetings in Geneva to debate an emerging and controversial technology autonomous weapons. These are more than just drones. They’re weapons that in theory could operate independently of human control. Opponents call them killer robots. Here to make sense of this new area of military technology is Paul Scharre of the Center for a New American Security. military guidelines on these weapons when he worked at the Pentagon. Welcome. canada goose coats on sale
PAUL canada goose parka outlet SCHARRE: Thanks. Thanks for having me.
Canada Goose online SCHARRE: Well, a number of countries around the world China, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom and France are all developing ever more sophisticated robotic weapons of a variety of fashions. Now, no one has come out and said clearly that they plan to cross the line to https://www.weezer-online.com go to fully autonomous weapons, but the technology they’re building is definitely going to come right up to that line. And none of these countries have also said that they wouldn’t cross it either. Canada Goose online
MCEVERS: I wonder if canada goose outlet black friday sale you could give us some examples of what kinds of autonomous weapons already exist. And then what are some things that are in development?
canada goose uk black friday SCHARRE: Sure. There are a number of countries at least 30 by our canada goose outlet price count that actually have automated defensive systems that have a higher level of automation where a human turns them on. And then if there’s an incoming threat, they can automatically fire to defend the ship or land base that they’re defending. canada goose uk black friday
canada goose cheap canada goose uk outlet MCEVERS: The Iron Dome, defense systems in South Korea those are the few examples that come to mind of those kinds of things, yeah. Patriot. canada goose uk outlet
MCEVERS: Those aren’t fully autonomous, right? I mean, those would be semi autonomous. So they’re using very limited defensive settings. People are supervising their operation in real time, and they can intervene to stop it. And they even have physical access, so if the machine started to simply go haywire, they could actually just physically unplug it.
Canada Goose sale MCEVERS: So give us an example of something that’s, you know could be developed in the future. Canada Goose sale
Canada Goose Online SCHARRE: So there canada goose outlet toronto are canada goose parka uk at least a half dozen countries building prototypes of combat drones that are designed to go into enemy territory. These would be things that would be stealth combat aircraft designed to penetrate into enemy territory where their communications might be jammed. Canada Goose Online
So that raises the question, well, what does it do when canada goose outlet mississauga it’s outside of human control? Is it allowed to strike pre planned targets much like cruise missiles today? Or if it comes across a new target and a human hadn’t programmed in guidance, does it strike it on its own according to some programming? And really, countries haven’t made those decisions yet.
MCEVERS: As I said, the United Nations has been meeting about this. There’s a group called The Future of Life Institute which opposes the development of these types of weapons. meetings. Let’s just hear a quick clip of that.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
Canada Goose Coats On Sale UNIDENTIFIED MAN: Trained as a team, they can penetrate buildings, cars, trains, evade people, bullets pretty much any countermeasure. They cannot be stopped. Canada Goose Coats On Sale
MCEVERS: Sounds pretty scary what he’s saying. Like, how far away are we from having what he is describing?
SCHARRE: So I think there’s a couple different canada goose outlet online aspects of what he’s describing that are really important to kind of separate out. A small drone that might be able to navigate up to a specific person, say, with facial recognition technology canada goose outlet seattle and then attack them that technology all exist today. Now, cobbling that together with the autonomy to target people all on its own no one’s done that yet, but that exists.
Now, the next step, leaping to something that has no countermeasure that can’t be stopped that’s science fiction. That just doesn’t exist in the real world. All military technologies have some countermeasures. And defense analysts look at the balance between the offense and defense.
MCEVERS: There’s a failsafe, yeah. We talked about these United Nations meetings. come to any meaningful decisions about regulating these things?
SCHARRE: No. They’ve been meeting for several years now, and they agreed to meet again. Diplomacy moves pretty slowly. And that is a real challenge on this topic, where the pace of technology is really outstripping the pace of diplomacy.
MCEVERS: Paul Scharre his book “Army Of None” on autonomous weapons comes out this spring. Thank you very much.
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