Obama, King of the Drones

[jimmy olsen]

Some surveillance drones can be fully automated, but armed drones need a "man-in-the-loop" with ultimate responsibility for launching a lethal attack.

Today.

Skynet sympathizer! 

[Berkut]

So when Bush sets up secret bases to fight terrorism in Africa, he is the greatest evil since Hitler, but when Obama does it, then that is OSSUM!

Figures!

[Ed Anger]

Drones aren't cleared for most of European airspace, there are only dedicated corridors. Fortunately there was one straight out of Sicily and down to Libya.

[Barrister]

In a perfect world, drones would roam European airspace and every time a Euro begins posting a lecture on Americans or American laws on a message board, a hellfire flies through their window.

Sigh.

But us Canucks can still criticize you at will due to our valuable oil tar sands, right?

Fixed. Nobody cares about the Loonie.

Amendmend cheerfully accepted. 

[AnchorClanker]

I've just written an article about the ethics of armed drones, including the increased use of AI. I could share but then I'd have to kill you. Suffice it to say the battlefield is too complex an environment to use AI effectively and insurgents will find a way non-identifiable or surrounded by human shields.

"You teach it that a small human carrying a ball is an invalid target and the insurgents will use small agents with ball-shaped bombs."

I also got slapped down by a Wing Commander yesterday for using the term "drones". The correct term is "remotely piloted aircraft".

  Yes, military people have their own jargon and stick to it - unless there's a faddish new term to exploit.

[CountDeMoney]

So when Bush sets up secret bases to fight terrorism in Africa, he is the greatest evil since Hitler, but when Obama does it, then that is OSSUM!

Sez who?

[Brazen]

Not the article I mentioned, but a spare interview that arrived too late with Robot Wars guru and fanatical anti AI in weapons proponent Dr Noel Sharkey.

COMMENT – Dr Noel Sharkey on the ethics of armed drones

Noel Sharkey is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence and Robotics at Sheffield University in the UK. He is a founding member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control and speaks on the need for international discussions to limit the potential threat to humanity caused by increasingly autonomous arms robotic military systems.

Brazen:  Tell us about your work with the International Committee for Robot Arms Control (ICRAC).

Noel Sharkey: ICRAC began at my house in Sheffield in September, 2009 with a small international group meeting for a three-day discussion on the problem with armed drones and with a particular concern for the move towards autonomous armed drones. One of our biggest concerns was that there was massive proliferation – I have traced 51 countries using the technology – and yet there was absolutely no international discussion about the future use of the weapons and how will they interact, and so on.

We had our first international workshop in Berlin on September 22, 2010. The committee joined in discussion with government officials, representatives of international human rights organisations, arms control experts, philosophers, scientists and engineers from a number of countries including the USA, UK, France, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Australia.

We are now planning our next meeting, which will probably be in New York.

B: What are your main concerns about the increasing use of armed drones?

NS: My biggest concern is the drive towards autonomous armed robots on the ground, in the air and at sea. In particular, I am worried about the use of lethal targeting. It has almost become a mantra now in places to say that there will always be a human somewhere in the loop. But where in the loop is very important. There should always be a person responsible for making lethal targeting decisions; a robot cannot be held accountable.

This concerns me for a number of reasons. The main one is the protection of civilians, innocents and children. There are no artificial intelligence (AI) systems that can discriminate between combatants and non-combatants or others with immunity. It is not just because current visual and sensing systems are not up to the job, though I cannot see them being so in the next 20 or 30 years. Even if the systems were up to the job, deciding who to kill and when it is appropriate to kill require reasoning and battlefield awareness that is well outside of what AI systems can do. And there is no evidence to suggest when, or if, they will ever be able to do this.

In other words, we are heading towards mobile indiscriminate weapons that can get anywhere on earth quickly. When all the major nations have them, and they will, there is no telling what the consequences will be of the different complex algorithms interacting. They will all be kept secret.

Other major concerns are that having such weapons may lower the bar for going to war; the lack of body-bag count lowers the risks, so wars may be triggered more easily. We can see the beginning of this with top Obama lawyer, Harold Koh. *

B: I understand from articles you have written that you believe using an armed drone is less ethical than a pilot shooting a target. Why is that?

NS: The question is put too simplistically.

There are a number of different issues here. First, the conventional forces used remote-piloted drones for air strikes in countries where the International Force are in conflicts: Iraq and Pakistan. This not greatly different from using cruise missiles except that their perceived accuracy allows expansion of the battlespace into urban areas. Despite the claims of great accuracy, many civilians are being killed.
Second, there are the CIA-targeted killings in Pakistan, Somalia and the Yemen. In these cases alleged insurgent leaders are killed along with anyone near them. Philip Alston, who was UN special rapporteur for extrajudicial killings, has said that the strikes are illegal under International Humanitarian Law (IHL) because there is no due process and no chance of a hearing or a trail. Other methods of capture are not attempted. There is no accountability and no rationale is given for the target selection.

Then there are the new autonomous drones. These should not be allowed to make decisions about lethal targeting as they are indiscriminate and could be disproportionate. They would be OK to use in a military-rich environment such as the WWII battlefields, but in the current type of urban conflict many civilians could die.

B:  The use of armed drones is governed by international military convention. What do you think is missing from current guidelines that could be done better?

NS: I am not an international lawyer but there are no specific rules governing the use of drones. Current IHL appears to have the instruments necessary to control drone use, but there is some difficulty in mapping how drones are used against IHL dictates.
One of the problems is that there has been no international discussion between nation states about the massive proliferation, and I have tracked 51 countries using them. It seems OK now with Israel, the US and their allies using them in permissive air space. But China is now discussing selling armed drones, and when more sophisticated countries have their own, we might see some of the precedents being set up by the US come back to bite us.

B: You make a distinction between human-in-the-loop and human-on-the-loop. What's the difference?

NS: The idea of a human-on-the-loop means that the human will be in executive control overall to call in or call off the robots, rather than being in control of each individually. In other words, the robots will be essentially autonomous.

The USAF Flight Plan 2009–2032 says on page 39: "SWARM technology will allow multiple MQ-Mb aircraft to cooperatively operate in a variety of lethal and non-lethal missions at the command of a single pilot." Such a move would require decisions being made by the swarm – human decision-making would be too slow and not able to react to the control of several aircraft at once. With the increasing pace of the action and with the potential of several aircraft to choose targets at the same time, it will not be possible to have the human make all the decisions to kill.

B: Aside from the issues of lethality and the risk of hitting the wrong targets, do you think moral issues such as the pilots not putting themselves in danger or the fact the enemy seldom has access to equivalent technology are valid?

NS: This is a very difficult question. There have always been moral issues about distance targeting using artillery and carpet bombing; remote controlling a weapon at a distance is not much different. The moral questions arise in how the weapon is used. If being at a distance creates a moral buffer that makes the operator less careful about targeting, then there is a problem.

The real issue about being able to hover an aircraft for up to 26 hours, a duration which is increasing, without a person on board is how it changes the nature of warfare both in terms of the use of the drones and how the enemy is forced to fight back. Such extreme asymmetry will surely simply increase terrorist attacks and make the world a less secure place to live in.

* Koh argued strongly in a March 2010 speech for the legality of targeted killing by aerial drone strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and other countries included by the US government as being within the scope of the war on terror. (Wikipedia)

[Berkut]

I can't really argue with much of his concerns, although I think he is committing the error of making assumptions about how things will be, then arguing against those things.

For example:

Such extreme asymmetry will surely simply increase terrorist attacks and make the world a less secure place to live in.

Uhh, how can you possibly know that? I mean, I suppose that is a possible result, but it is one possibilty among many, and there is no reason to presume that it is the likely outcome.

We should be talking about these issues though. Remotely controlled weapons are here to stay, and he is right that there is very little agreed upon protocols for how to use them.

[citizen k]

... do you think moral issues such as the pilots not putting themselves in danger or the fact the enemy seldom has access to equivalent technology are valid?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: Depends on your morality. 

[Ed Anger]

The college I teach at is going to offer a UAV course.

So sleep well at night. The drones are gonna be flown by Community College grads.

[MadImmortalMan]

The college I teach at is going to offer a UAV course.

So sleep well at night. The drones are gonna be flown by Community College grads.

Twitchy bastards have grown up on Call of Duty. They'll be fine.

[Ed Anger]

Officer: You hit a school.
"pilot": AWESOME DUDE!

[Razgovory]

... do you think moral issues such as the pilots not putting themselves in danger or the fact the enemy seldom has access to equivalent technology are valid?

Short answer: No.
Long answer: Depends on your morality. 

The guy brings up WWII as a military rich environment.  I think he should be reminded that during the war whole cities were blasted to rubble to hit just one target.

[AnchorClanker]

Whole cities were blasted to rubble in order to blast cities into rubble.

[Razgovory]

Whole cities were blasted to rubble in order to blast cities into rubble.

Well that as well.  Toward the end whole cities were blasted into rubble to give the air corps something to do.