What Happens When Your Bomb-Defusing Robot Becomes a Weapon - Defense One
▻https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2018/04/what-happens-when-your-bomb-defusing-robot-becomes-a-weapon/558758
To Greiner, Purdy, and the DOD, there’s a critical ethical distinction between a robot deciding to kill somebody, and a robot being ordered to kill somebody. There’s something dehumanizing, they think, about a robot determining who lives and who dies. That type of decision should be left up to whoever is pulling the trigger—even if they’re thousands of miles away.
It all feels a bit anamorphic: Robots can kill, so long as they don’t make what the military calls a “kill decision.” Meanwhile, engineers are working on technology that takes soldiers further and further out of the field. Viewed from some angles, that’s lifesaving.
But from others, it’s not. One of the strangest things about the world we’ve created is when, and how, we allow one person to kill another. At the heart of those rules—in war, in policing—is the idea that when someone is trying to kill you, you have a right to kill her. But in a fight where one side can’t die or even feel pain, those rules become unclear. When should a robot be directed to disarm, or to kill?