Hollywood-style robots able to shoot people without permission from their human handlers are a real possibility and must be banned before governments start deploying them, campaigners warned on Monday.
The report “Losing Humanity”, issued by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School’s International Human Rights Clinic, raised the alarm over the ethics of the looming technology.
Calling them “killer robots,” the report urged “an international treaty that would absolutely prohibit the development, production, and use of fully autonomous weapons”.
The US military already leads the way in military robots, notably the unmanned aircraft or drones used for surveillance or attacks over Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen and elsewhere. But these are controlled by human operators in ground bases and are not able to kill without authorisation.
Fully autonomous robots that decide for themselves when to fire could be developed within 20 to 30 years, or “even sooner,” the 50-page report said, adding that weapon systems that require little human intervention already exist.
Raytheon’s Phalanx gun system, deployed on US Navy ships, can search for enemy fire and destroy incoming projectiles all by itself. The X47B is a plane-sized drone able to take off and land on aircraft carriers without a pilot and even refuel in the air.
Perhaps closest to the Terminator-type killing machine portrayed in Arnold Schwarzenegger’s action films is a Samsung sentry robot already being used in South Korea, with the ability to spot unusual activity, talk to intruders and, when authorised by a human controller, shoot them.