Translator: Joseph Geni Reviewer: Morton Bast
I write fiction sci-fi thrillers,
so if I say "killer robots,"
you'd probably think something like this.
But I'm actually not here to talk about fiction.
I'm here to talk about very real killer robots,
autonomous combat drones.
Now, I'm not referring to Predator and Reaper drones,
which have a human making targeting decisions.
I'm talking about fully autonomous robotic weapons
that make lethal decisions about human beings
all on their own.
There's actually a technical term for this: lethal autonomy.
Now, lethally autonomous killer robots
would take many forms -- flying, driving,
or just lying in wait.
And actually, they're very quickly becoming a reality.
These are two automatic sniper stations
currently deployed in the DMZ between North and South Korea.
Both of these machines are capable of automatically
identifying a human target and firing on it,
the one on the left at a distance of over a kilometer.
Now, in both cases, there's still a human in the loop
to make that lethal firing decision,
but it's not a technological requirement. It's a choice.
And it's that choice that I want to focus on,
because as we migrate lethal decision-making
from humans to software,
we risk not only taking the humanity out of war,
but also changing our social landscape entirely,
far from the battlefield.
That's because the way humans resolve conflict
shapes our social landscape.
And this has always been the case, throughout history.
For example, these were state-of-the-art weapons systems
in 1400 A.D.
Now they were both very expensive to build and maintain,
but with these you could dominate the populace,
and the distribution of political power in feudal society reflected that.
Power was focused at the very top.
And what changed? Technological innovation.
Gunpowder, cannon.
And pretty soon, armor and castles were obsolete,
and it mattered less who you brought to the battlefield
versus how many people you brought to the battlefield.
And as armies grew in size, the nation-state arose
as a political and logistical requirement of defense.
And as leaders had to rely on more of their populace,
they began to share power.
Representative government began to form.
So again, the tools we use to resolve conflict
shape our social landscape.
Autonomous robotic weapons are such a tool,
except that, by requiring very few people to go to war,
they risk re-centralizing power into very few hands,
possibly reversing a five-century trend toward democracy.
Now, I think, knowing this,
we can take decisive steps to preserve our democratic institutions,
to do what humans do best, which is adapt.
But time is a factor.
Seventy nations are developing remotely-piloted
combat drones of their own,
and as you'll see, remotely-piloted combat drones
are the precursors to autonomous robotic weapons.
That's because once you've deployed remotely-piloted drones,
there are three powerful factors pushing decision-making
away from humans and on to the weapon platform itself.
The first of these is the deluge of video that drones produce.
For example, in 2004, the U.S. drone fleet produced
a grand total of 71 hours of video surveillance for analysis.
By 2011, this had gone up to 300,000 hours,
outstripping human ability to review it all,
but even that number is about to go up drastically.
The Pentagon's Gorgon Stare and Argus programs
will put up to 65 independently operated camera eyes
on each drone platform,
and this would vastly outstrip human ability to review it.
And that means visual intelligence software will need
to scan it for items of interest.
And that means very soon
drones will tell humans what to look at,
not the other way around.
But there's a second powerful incentive pushing
decision-making away from humans and onto machines,
and that's electromagnetic jamming,
severing the connection between the drone
and its operator.
Now we saw an example of this in 2011
when an American RQ-170 Sentinel drone
got a bit confused over Iran due to a GPS spoofing attack,
but any remotely-piloted drone is susceptible to this type of attack,
and that means drones
will have to shoulder more decision-making.
They'll know their mission objective,
and they'll react to new circumstances without human guidance.
They'll ignore external radio signals
and send very few of their own.
Which brings us to, really, the third
and most powerful incentive pushing decision-making
away from humans and onto weapons:
plausible deniability.
Now we live in a global economy.
High-tech manufacturing is occurring on most continents.
Cyber espionage is spiriting away advanced designs
to parts unknown,
and in that environment, it is very likely
that a successful drone design will be knocked off in contract factories,
proliferate in the gray market.
And in that situation, sifting through the wreckage
of a suicide drone attack, it will be very difficult to say
who sent that weapon.
This raises the very real possibility
of anonymous war.
This could tilt the geopolitical balance on its head,
make it very difficult for a nation to turn its firepower
against an attacker, and that could shift the balance
in the 21st century away from defense and toward offense.
It could make military action a viable option
not just for small nations,
but criminal organizations, private enterprise,
even powerful individuals.
It could create a landscape of rival warlords
undermining rule of law and civil society.
Now if responsibility and transparency
are two of the cornerstones of representative government,
autonomous robotic weapons could undermine both.
Now you might be thinking that
citizens of high-tech nations
would have the advantage in any robotic war,
that citizens of those nations would be less vulnerable,
particularly against developing nations.
But I think the truth is the exact opposite.
I think citizens of high-tech societies
are more vulnerable to robotic weapons,
and the reason can be summed up in one word: data.
Data powers high-tech societies.
Cell phone geolocation, telecom metadata,
social media, email, text, financial transaction data,
transportation data, it's a wealth of real-time data
on the movements and social interactions of people.
In short, we are more visible to machines
than any people in history,
and this perfectly suits the targeting needs of autonomous weapons.
What you're looking at here
is a link analysis map of a social group.
Lines indicate social connectedness between individuals.
And these types of maps can be automatically generated
based on the data trail modern people leave behind.
Now it's typically used to market goods and services
to targeted demographics, but it's a dual-use technology,
because targeting is used in another context.
Notice that certain individuals are highlighted.
These are the hubs of social networks.
These are organizers, opinion-makers, leaders,
and these people also can be automatically identified
from their communication patterns.
Now, if you're a marketer, you might then target them
with product samples, try to spread your brand
through their social group.
But if you're a repressive government
searching for political enemies, you might instead remove them,
eliminate them, disrupt their social group,
and those who remain behind lose social cohesion
and organization.
Now in a world of cheap, proliferating robotic weapons,
borders would offer very little protection
to critics of distant governments
or trans-national criminal organizations.
Popular movements agitating for change
could be detected early and their leaders eliminated
before their ideas achieve critical mass.
And ideas achieving critical mass
is what political activism in popular government is all about.
Anonymous lethal weapons could make lethal action
an easy choice for all sorts of competing interests.
And this would put a chill on free speech
and popular political action, the very heart of democracy.
And this is why we need an international treaty
on robotic weapons, and in particular a global ban
on the development and deployment of killer robots.
Now we already have international treaties
on nuclear and biological weapons, and, while imperfect,
these have largely worked.
But robotic weapons might be every bit as dangerous,
because they will almost certainly be used,
and they would also be corrosive to our democratic institutions.
Now in November 2012 the U.S. Department of Defense
issued a directive requiring
a human being be present in all lethal decisions.
This temporarily effectively banned autonomous weapons in the U.S. military,
but that directive needs to be made permanent.
And it could set the stage for global action.
Because we need an international legal framework
for robotic weapons.
And we need it now, before there's a devastating attack
or a terrorist incident that causes nations of the world
to rush to adopt these weapons
before thinking through the consequences.
Autonomous robotic weapons concentrate too much power
in too few hands, and they would imperil democracy itself.
Now, don't get me wrong, I think there are tons
of great uses for unarmed civilian drones:
environmental monitoring, search and rescue, logistics.
If we have an international treaty on robotic weapons,
how do we gain the benefits of autonomous drones
and vehicles while still protecting ourselves
against illegal robotic weapons?
I think the secret will be transparency.
No robot should have an expectation of privacy
in a public place.
(Applause)
Each robot and drone should have
a cryptographically signed I.D. burned in at the factory
that can be used to track its movement through public spaces.
We have license plates on cars, tail numbers on aircraft.
This is no different.
And every citizen should be able to download an app
that shows the population of drones and autonomous vehicles
moving through public spaces around them,
both right now and historically.
And civic leaders should deploy sensors and civic drones
to detect rogue drones,
and instead of sending killer drones of their own up to shoot them down,
they should notify humans to their presence.
And in certain very high-security areas,
perhaps civic drones would snare them
and drag them off to a bomb disposal facility.
But notice, this is more an immune system
than a weapons system.
It would allow us to avail ourselves of the use
of autonomous vehicles and drones
while still preserving our open, civil society.
We must ban the deployment and development
of killer robots.
Let's not succumb to the temptation to automate war.
Autocratic governments and criminal organizations
undoubtedly will, but let's not join them.
Autonomous robotic weapons
would concentrate too much power
in too few unseen hands,
and that would be corrosive to representative government.
Let's make sure, for democracies at least,
killer robots remain fiction.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thank you. (Applause)