Recently a video of a robot similar to Spot – a robot made by Boston Dynamics – turned into a gun has been making the rounds on the web. The creations of the robotics company, now owned by Hyundai, were also seen alongside French soldiers or various police services. The team behind this company has always spoken out once morest the militarization of its robots.
Boston Dynamics and five other robotics companies are calling this October 6, 2022 in an open letter not to arm robots intended for general use. The other signatories are Agility Robotics, which works in particular with FordANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics et Unitree Robotics.
Public trust
They begin by discussing the advances in robotics in recent years. They evoke the new generations of robots “more accessible, easier to use, more autonomous, affordable and adaptable than previous generations, and able to navigate places previously inaccessible to automated or remote-controlled technologies.”
They assure that it can bring countless benefits to society, but like any new technology that offers new capabilities, “the emergence of advanced mobile robots opens up the possibility of misuse […]. Armaments is an area of particular concern.”
The signatories explain that it raises many ethical issues and entails significant risks for humans that robots (whether remotely controlled or autonomous) can be armed. They explain that it will also damage public trust, overshadowing their benefits to society. “We do not support the militarization of our advanced mobility general-purpose robots”they say.
They undertake not to weaponize their robots or the software they develop themselves, and not to help others to do so. Roboticists want to track customer usage of their robots as much as they can to avoid weaponization and are committed to exploring the development of features that might mitigate or reduce these risks. The signatories call on other societies to join them and ask politicians to take the necessary measures to deal with these risks.
The issue of lethal autonomous weapons
However, the establishment of any policy on this subject seems complicated. Several states are already working on the development of robots and other autonomous technologies to help their armies.
At the UN level alone, states are unable to agree on a ban on lethal autonomous weapons, which are commonly defined as weapons that select their own target and destroy it. Drones might particularly fall into this category, but it is also possible to envisage the creation of a sufficiently successful autonomous robot that can fall into this definition.
