Terminator Zero

Four years of throwing the American military against the same wall while seeking different results has been tough on those who serve.  Thousands are dead, tens of thousands have been severely injured, and almost the whole of the military is in a state of near exhaustion.

Not a problem.  We just need to build more soldiers.

By adding Tasers to robots it already makes for the military, iRobot Corp. says it hopes to give soldiers and law enforcement a defensive, non-lethal tool.

But some observers fear such developments could ultimately lead to robots capable of deciding on their own when to shoot and kill.

Truthfully, the iRobot development is, for the moment at least, rather tame.  There are already Taser-equipped robots available to the military in the form of Foster-Miller's "Talon."  And the military already has a variety of drone aircraft, some of which are equipped with a variety of very lethal weapons, and some of which are already self-directed with no human pilot in control.  In comparison, a joystick-driven device that crawls along on tracks and carries a taser is rather laughable.

Still, the trend toward metal soldiers seems to be gaining steam.  More lethal versions have already been developed, such as Samsung's machine-gun toting patrol-bot which they hope will take on the job of maintaining the border with North Korea.

Equipped with visual and infra-red detection capabilities, the sentry robot can spot moving objects up to four kilometers (2.5 miles) away during the day and half that distance at night.  Via "pattern recognition," it can distinguish between humans, cars or trees at two kilometers in daytime and one kilometer at night.

Suppressive fire can be provided by a machine gun on top.

If the idea of the Korean border being guarded by a set of self-targeting machine guns is disturbing, the BBC's World Today talked over the idea of more widespread use of battlefield robots with US "security expert," John Pike.  

Pike: Maybe they're going to be walking around on legs.  Maybe they're going to be moving around on wheels or treads.  They would be autonomous robots authorized to use force against human beings under some circumstances.

BBC: what sort of circumstances?

Pike: Well, we already have rules under which police or soldiers can use force, and I think that you'd simply have the same set of rules applying to robots.  I think the difference is that the robots would be more inclined to follow the rules and less inclined to engage in the kind of human foibles that sometimes results in rules being violated.

Considering some of the horrors that have occurred in Iraq, the idea of always "following the rules," doesn't on the face of it sound so bad -- though as someone who had spent a couple of decades writing software, I have enormous doubts about the ability of any program to sort through the chaos of the real world battlefield and take proper action.  But following the rules can have different meanings.

BBC: So you say that these robots might not have human foibles, that means they're not going to worry about shooting people, are they?  They're not going to worry about whether that person is waving a white flag.  How is that going to work?

Pike: If an individual is waving a white flag, that would probably put the robot under the rules to accept their surrender rather than to kill them.  On the other hand, what you see in battle is that a lot of soldiers, a lot of troops, will not shoot at the enemy.  And the difference with robots is they will kill without compunction.  They will have no mercy.  They will have no hesitation.  No reservation.  If they see somebody, and that person is still representing a hostile threat... no regrets, no nightmares.

The thought of red-eyed, heartless terminators stalking the battlefield is disturbing, but to a large degree this is only another reflection of the situation we face today.  We work, as we should, to see that our soldiers have all the protective gear available and we invest billions in developing more devastating weapons.  We drop bombs from high in the air.  We fire missiles from ships miles off shore.  We can see the effects this has on those who oppose us, but what does it do to us?  

During the conquest of the Americas, conquistadors held such a technological advantage over Native American opposition, that a cadre of a few hundred men was able to destroy an army of 40,000 without taking a single loss.  Medieval knights, encased in armor, were essentially immune to the assaults of peasants who could not afford similar kit, able to wade the battlefield like unstoppable human tanks.  Both cultures, despite paying lip-service to peace and love, were waist-deep in blood.

When war is too easy, war becomes frequent.  When war is too easy, war becomes the first choice, rather than the last.