Human Rights Watch calls for a ban on ‘killer robots’ before they are fully deployed

In September of this year, I wrote an article about the Defense Science Board calling on the U.S. Department of Defense to “more aggressively use autonomy in military missions.”

Now Human Rights Watch (HRW) has produced a 50 page report entitled “Losing Humanity: The Case Against Killer Robots” (PDF) calling on a complete ban on “killer robots,” or, more precisely, “fully autonomous weapons.”

Before delving into this report, I am obligated to point out that HRW is far from a faultless organization, as seen in this article on HRW on SourceWatch. That being said, HRW is the apparently the first non-governmental organization (NGO) to address the issue thus far.

The use of drones is questionable enough, as highlighted by the work of applied ethicist Dr. Robert Sparrow, but the concerns surrounding autonomous systems go far beyond those of drones.

Note: to learn more about drones, their use, their future and the dangers of this type of technology, I highly suggest you read some of the many articles published on End the Lie. This is a topic that is not going away and requires a deep level of research to understand.

HRW is now calling on Governments to “pre-emptively ban fully autonomous weapons because of the danger they pose to civilians in armed conflict,” which is indeed something which must be done in order to preserve human rights.

Fully autonomous weapons systems are even more dangerous than typical drones because “humans could start to fade out of the decision-making loop, retaining a limited oversight role—or perhaps no role at all,” according to the HRW report.

As hard as it may be to believe, the prospect of fully autonomous weapons is not pure science fiction, evidenced by the aforementioned Defense Science Board document.

These intentions are also outlined in “Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap FY2011-2036” (PDF) an October 2011 document produced by the Department of Defense.

In the document, the Department of Defense reveals that it “envisions unmanned systems seamlessly operating with manned systems while gradually reducing the degree of human control and decision making required for the unmanned portion of the force structure.”

There are quite strong driving forces behind this, not only the powerful drone lobby (and their friends in the aviation industry as a whole), but also the fact that the military is simply overwhelmed with the sheer amount of data gathered by drones around the world.

This constant data stream is only increasing with drones capable of capturing 36 square miles of imagery in a single blink along with the U.S. military operating drones domestically and sharing the captured data with law enforcement.

Indeed, according to the “Unmanned Ground Systems Roadmap,” released by the Robotic Systems Joint Project Office in July of last year, the U.S. military is working towards totally autonomous weapons systems.

“There is an ongoing push to increase UGV [unmanned ground vehicle] autonomy, with a current goal of ‘supervised autonomy,’ but with an ultimate goal of full autonomy,” the report (PDF) states.

“Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan 2009-2047,” a 2009 report (PDF) from the U.S. Air Force, revealed that “[i]ncreasingly humans will no longer be ‘in the loop’ but rather ‘on the loop’—monitoring the execution of certain decisions. Simultaneously, advances in AI will enable systems to make combat decisions and act within legal and policy constraints without necessarily requiring human input.”

These plans are, surprisingly, not as new as one might think, evidenced by a 2004 planning document (PDF) produced by the U.S. Navy.

The document, “The Navy Unmanned Undersea Vehicle (UUV) Master Plan,” states, “While admittedly futuristic in vision, one can conceive of scenarios where UUVs sense, track, identify, target, and destroy an enemy—all autonomously.”

This would entirely eliminate humans from the so-called “kill chain,” making the already common slaughter of civilians even more routine.

“Giving machines the power to decide who lives and dies on the battlefield would take technology too far,” said Steve Goose, the Director of the Arms Division at HRW, in a press release. “Human control of robotic warfare is essential to minimizing civilian deaths and injuries.”

The 50-page report, boasting over 182 footnotes, is an absolute must read as it covers a great deal of ground while also making some sensible recommendations and pointing out some of the many unseen dangers lurking behind this type of technology.