Faced with ethical results, six US robotics companies agree to no longer produce robots that could be used to kill. They also intend to equip their civilian robots with systems to avoid hijacking them so they don’t turn into lethal weapons.
It’s been a few years since killer robots are no longer part of the realm of the imagination. Between dronesdrones autonomous killers, robot killers or robots like the chienchien Spur equipped with an assault rifle, examples abound. Technology is being adopted or diverted by increasingly unscrupulous states it mattersit matters of ethics. At the level of the legal framework, that doesn’t work either. While UN members agreed at the end of last year that a framework should apply to their use, it was no longer about banning them as was the case last year.
It is always the same countries that drag their feet on a regulation: India, Russia and the United States that do not want binding regulations. However, it could very well be that the decision to stop the proliferation of these lethal autonomous weapons systems (SALA), otherwise known as killer robots, ultimately comes from the civilian sector, at least in the United States.
Stop the hijacking of civilian robots
So Boston Dynamics and five other robot manufacturers (Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics and Unitree Robotics), just announced Thursday that they will stop developing robots for military purposes and will no longer authorize their use in this sense. . In their missive audience brought by Boston Dynamics, explained that they believe that ” adding weapons to remotely or autonomously operated robots […] it raises new risks and serious ethical problems. “
What caught their attention and reinforced this decision was that a small number of individuals managed to arm the commercial versions of their robots. This is particularly the case with Spot, a suicide robot equipped with a bomb that was used in 2016 by the police to eliminate the perpetrator of a hostage-taking in Dallas. Companies are also busy developing new technological bricks that could prevent the hijacking of robots for these purposes.
As for existing robots, that is, robots that they have developed in coordination with the army or security forces, they do not object to their use as long as it is not a diversion. However, this letter was not signed by all companies in the industry. This is particularly the case with Ghost Robotics who designed the Spur armored robot.
