War robots will not save the lives of soldiers, but paradoxically they can make killing people worse, says an American ethicist

What are the benefits of using battle bots?

Killer robots have their humanitarian benefits. For example, they can kill with surgical precision – compared to area bombing. They can save lives on the one hand, but also civilian casualties on the other. They can serve as a deterrent to prevent war from ever starting.

And why do you think it is dangerous if robotics and artificial intelligence are introduced into warfare?

I’d say the main danger isn’t a robot accidentally killing someone innocent. The point is that robots would make the decision to go to war too easy. A high price is at stake in that decision – human lives, blood, material damage.

The robot doesn’t really know what it’s doing. He has no consciousness, he has no choice. They don’t see us as persons, we are just targets they aim at.

Patrick Lin

Politicians usually think carefully about whether to go for it or not. They mainly want to stay in power. But when they can just send out robots without risking someone falling in combat, then fighting becomes an easier choice. However, this puts us in a vicious circle – an endless arms race. It is a systemic risk, bigger and broader.

Does this mean that security will decrease globally?

It is a risk to humanity and human dignity! The robot doesn’t really know what it’s doing. He has no consciousness, he has no choice. It’s a machine that does what you tell it to do, and that doesn’t seem humane. We want soldiers – and it’s a tough job – to think about the people on the other side of the gun. To see them as people. But the robot doesn’t see us as persons, we are just targets it aims at.

Even when we talk about war, we want it to be fair.

How can we imagine a dignified struggle?

We want to give the opponent a fighting chance. If one side could simply overwhelm the other, it’s not war, it’s massacre. Imagine some primitive aboriginal tribe fighting with bows and arrows against a modern army. She can easily crush him in a single day. But what’s in it for him?

It is morally wrong. It denies human dignity. It seems like I’m talking about medieval chivalry, but we should still maintain that value in the profession.

But how will we be if someone attacks us unfairly?

Of course, there are unfair players everywhere and we should watch out for them. But how to react to it? If you said we should ban killing bots, how effective is that really going to be? If we ban them here, we will only weaken ourselves. Even if they are banned by the United Nations, fake players will still work on them.

What can we do about it?

In military technology, hunters and prey develop in parallel: One state creates a weapon, the other invents a defense against it. When drones first appeared, it was said that there was nothing we could do against them, but today there are drone defenses. We can disrupt their signal, catch them in nets, somewhere they hunt them with trained eagles.

We can defend ourselves against them, but do we really want to live in a dystopian world where we are constantly defending ourselves against bad guys? It would be better to make friends out of adversaries. It is a difficult task, it requires diplomacy, cultural and scientific contacts. We caught a glimpse of it at the end of the Cold War, and I don’t know when it will happen again. He who develops weapons only to scare others will make more enemies than friends.