Comment Paper 4

After reading today’s articles, I am an opponent of autonomous robots. I do not see any good of continuing to remove soldiers from the battlefield and replacing them with unmanned aircrafts and autonomous robots. Robots do not have the intuition of humans to make critical decisions when it comes to life and death scenarios. They can only make decisions that they were programmed or “learned” how to do. There are certain characteristics that you cannot program into a robot: creativity, compassion, intuition, etc. A soldier possesses the power to decide whether or not to kill an individual. A robot on the other hand can mistakenly kill an innocent person because of bad programming. We are getting further and further away from war, and are using robotic technology to execute our killings. I believe autonomous robots are making killings extremely easy. The thought and process that went into the implementation of missions is now being curbed because of the robots.  However, who would we blame if a mistake were made? Of course, some would blame the robot for the mistake, but how is that even feasible? Individuals are the ones who programed the robot; however, there is no accountability for humans when a machine makes a mistake. It has been noted that soldiers disregarded their own intuition and trusted the robot instead. We automatically assume that a robot may be better informed or can perform a task better. This in fact, is not true; soldiers still play a major role in warfare and need not be so dependent on robots. Another major concern is the development of autonomous robots in foreign countries. This can be extremely dangerous because countries can essentially program their robots to destroy anything or anyone that is in its way. The United States is trying to win an arm’s race without realizing the consequences that can potentially form, a robotic war. War will no longer be considered man against man, but robot against man.