Fv esd ery Pre) Pg Corey Perry Coen aed Cree Cora Cee Oey Peres IndexIntroduction The image of the “killer robot” once belonged uniquely to the world of science fiction, This is still so, of course, but only if one thinks of human- like mechanical contraptions scheming to conquer the planet. The latest ‘weapons systems planned by the Pentagon, however, offer a less anthropo: morphic exan like: pilotless aircraft and unmanned tanks “intelligent” enough to be able to select and destroy their own targets, Although the existing prototypes of robotic weapons, like the PROWLER or the BRAVE 8000, are not yet truly autonomous, these new weapons do demonstrate that even if Artificial ligence is not at present sufficiently sophisticated to create true “killer robots," when synthetic intelligence does make its appearance on the planet, there will already be a predatory role awaiting it. The PROWLER, for example, is a small terrestrial armed vehicle, equipped with a primitive form of “machine vision” (the capability to ana- le of what machines with “predatory capabilities” might be el: Ize the contents ofa video frame) that allows it to maneuver around a battlefield and distinguish friends from enemies. Or at least this is the aim of the robot's designers. In reality, the PROWLER still has difficulty negot- ating sharp turns or maneuvering over rough terrain, and it also has poor Iriend/loe recognition capabilities. For these reasons it has been deployed ‘only for very simple tasks, such as patrolling a military installation along a predefined path. We do not know whether the PROWLER has ever opened doubtful that as ‘currently designed this robot has been authorized to kill humans on its own, fire on an intruder without human supervision, but it More likely, the TV camera that serves as its visual sensor is connected to @ Juman operator, and the intelligent processing capabilites of the robot are used atthe “advisory” and not the "executive" level. For now, the robot simply makes the job ofits human remote-controller easier by preprocessing some ofthe information itself, or even by making and then relaying a pre liminary assessment of events within its visual field But itis precisely the distinction between advisory and executive capa bilities that is being blurred in other military applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Perhaps the best example ofthe fading differences between 8 purely advisory and an executive role for computers may be drawn from the area of war games. In the war games ofthe recent past computers playedthe role of intelligent assistants: human players made decisions affecting the movements and actions of “tr00ps in the game, while computers calculated the effect ofa given attack, using such concepts as a weapon’s “lethality index,” the rate of advance of tactical units, the relative strength of a given defensive posture or the effectiveness ofa specific offensive maneuver. Since their invention in the early nineteenth century, war games have allowed human participants to gain strategic insights and have given offi ‘ers the opportunity to acquire " war, This function has become even more important in the case of nuclear type of war that has never been fought and for which there is no other way of training, But in game after game human players have proven reluc tant to cross the nuclear threshold. They typically attempt every possible negotiation before pushing the fateful bution. This has led war-game design- le experience” in the absence of x real ‘ers to create new versions ofthis technology in which automata completely replace human players: SAM and IVAN, as these robots are called, do not have any problem triggering World War IL. To the extent that the derived from watching automata fight simulated armageddons actually find their way inta strategic doctrine and contingency plans, these “rabot events" have already begun to blur the distinction between a purely advisory and aan executive role for intelligent machines, Now indeed robotic intelligence will find its way into military technol ‘ogy in different ways and at different speeds. Traditional computer applica- ‘tions to warfare (radar systems, radio networks for Control, Command and Communications, navigation and guidance devices for missiles), will become “smarter” following each breakthrough in Al. Mechanical intelligence will ‘once again “migrate” into offensive and defensive weaponry ax Al creates new ways for machines to “learn” from experience, to plan problem-solving strategies at different levels of complexity and even to acquite some “com- ‘mon sense” in order to eliminate irrelevant details from consideration. But ‘we need not imagine full-fledged, human-like robots replacing soldiers in the battlefield, or robotic commanders replacing human judgment in the plan- ‘ning and conducting of military operations. These two technologies (auton- ‘omous weapons and battle management systems) were indeed announced by the Pentagon as two key goals for military research in the 1980s und '%s But this announcement, made in a 1984 document entitled “Strategic Com: puting,” was as much a public relations maneuver as it was an indication of the military roles that AI will one day come to play If we disregard for a moment the fact that robotic intelligence will prob- ably not follow the anthropomorphic line of development prepared for it by science fiction, we may without much difficulty imagine a future generation of killer robots dedicated to understanding their historical origins, We may ‘even imagine specialized “robot historians” committed to tracing the vari- ‘ous technological lineages that gave rise to their species. And we could gine that such a robot historian would write a different kind of history than would its human counterpart. While a human historian might further try to understand the way people assembled clockworks, motors and other physical contraptions, a robot historian would likely place a stronger empha sis on the way these machines affected humman evolution. The robot would stress the fact that when elockworks once represented the dominant technol~ ‘ogy on the planet, people imagined the world around them asa similar system of cogs and wheels, The solar system, for instance, was pictured right ‘up until the nineteenth century as just such a clockwork mechanism, that is, a8 motorless system animated by God from the outside. Later, when motors ‘came along, people began to realize that many natural systems behave more like motors: they run on an external reservoir of resources and exploit the labor performed by circulating flows of matter and energy. The robot historian of course would hardly be bothered by the fact that ‘twas a human who put the first motor together: forthe role of humans would be seen as little more than that of industrious insects pollinating an independent species of machine-flowers that simply did not possess its own reproductive organs during a segment of its evolution. Similarly, when this robot historian turned its attention to the evolution of armies in order to trace the history ofits own weaponry, it would see humans as no more than pieces of a larger military-industrial machine: a war machine. The assem- bling of these machines would have been, from this point of view, influ- enced by certain “machinie paradigms” that were prevalent at the ime. The armies of Frederick the Great, for instance, could be pictured as one gigan tic “clockwork” mechanism, employing mercenaries as its cogs and wheels. In a similar way, Napoleon's armies could be viewed asa "motor" running ‘on a reservoir of populations and nationalist feelings. ‘Nor would robot historians need to ascribe an essential role to great commanders, for these might be seen as mere catalysts forthe self-assembly of war machines. Such assemblages, the robot would say, were influenced no more by particular individuals than by collective forces, such asthe demo- graphic turbulence caused by migrations, crusades and invasions. Moreover, fur historian would notice that some ofits “mnachinic ancestors,” like the conoidal bullet of the nineteenth century, resisted human control for over a Ihundred years, It simply took that long for human commanders to integrate rifled firepower into an explicit tctieal doctrine. Since then, of course, the conoidal bullet has lived a life ofits own as one of the most lethal inhabi ‘tants of the battlefield. In this sense technological development may be said to possess its own momentum, for clearly it i not always guided by human needs. As the simple cate ofthe conoidal bullet illustrates, a given technol: ‘ogy may even force humai to redefine their needs: the accuracy of the new