Killer robots ready to strike?

The rush to ban and demonize autonomous weapons or “killer robots” may be a temporary solution, but the actual problem is that society is entering into a situation where systems like these have and will become possible, according to a paper published by a University at Buffalo research team.

Killer robots are at the center of classic stories told in films such as “The Terminator” and the original Star Trek television series’ “The Doomsday Machine,” yet the idea of fully autonomous weapons acting independently of any human agency is not the exclusive license of science fiction writers.

The Pentagon allocated $18 billion of its latest budget to develop systems and technologies that could form the basis of fully autonomous weapons, instruments that independently seek, identify and attack enemy combatants or targets, according to The New York Times.

A group of non-governmental organizations, including Human Rights Watch, is already working collectively to stop their development. Governance and control of systems like killer robots needs to go beyond the end products.

“We have to deconstruct the term ‘killer robot’ into smaller cultural techniques,” says Tero Karppi, assistant professor of media study, whose paper with Marc Böhlen, UB professor of media study, and Yvette Granta, a graduate student at the university, appears in the International Journal of Cultural Studies.

“We need to go back and look at the history of machine learning, pattern recognition and predictive modeling, and how these things are conceived,” says Karppi, an expert in critical platform and software studies whose interests include automation, artificial intelligence and how these systems fail. “What are the principles and ideologies of building an automated system? What can it do?”

By looking at killer robots we are forced to address questions that are set to define the coming age of automation, artificial intelligence and robotics, he says.