Abstract
In this article, we argue that the implementation of military robots must be preceded by a careful reflection on the ethics of warfare in that warfare must be regarded as a strictly human activity, for which human beings must remain responsible and in control and that ethical decision-making can never be transferred to autonomous robots in the foreseeable future, since these robots are not capable of making ethical decisions. Non-autonomous robots require that humans authorize any decision to use lethal force, i.e., they require a ‘man-in-the-loop’. We propose a model of relationality for the moral attitude that is needed to confront the moral questions and dilemmas that will be faced by future military operations using robots. This model provides two minimal criteria for ethical decision making: non-binary thinking and reflexivity by means of rooting and shifting. In the second part of this article, we apply these criteria to today’s human operators of non-autonomous military robots and secondly, to tomorrow’s autonomous military robots, and ask whether robots are capable of relationality, and to what degree human operators make decisions on the basis of relationality. We then conclude with what we take to be a possible, albeit limited, role for robotics in the military with regard to both the current and the foreseeable future role of military robotics.
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Notes
- 1.
The Predator is an unmanned airplane which can remain airborne for 24 h and is currently employed extensively in Afghanistan. The Predator drones can fire Hellfire missiles and are flown by pilots located at a military base in the Nevada desert, thousands of miles away from the battlefield. Their successor, the Reaper, which may phase out the F-16, has already been spotted in Afghanistan. This machine can carry 5,000 pounds of explosive devices, Hellfire missiles, or laser directed bombs, and uses day-and-night cameras to navigate through a sheet of clouds. This unmanned combat aerial vehicle is operated by two pilots located at a ground control station behind a computer at a safe distance from the war zone.
- 2.
To make sure that military robots would perform reliably and lawfully they could be required to pass a military Turing Test “That means an autonomous system should be no worse than a human at taking decisions [about valid targets]” (Mick 2008). This test entails an assessment of the comparative morality pairs of descriptions of morally significant behaviour where one describes the actions of a human being in an ethical dilemma and the other the actions of a machine faced with the same dilemma. If the machine is not identified as the less moral pair significantly, then it has passed the test (Mick 2008).
- 3.
Singapore has announced its goal to build a military robot, named Urban Warrior, that can fight autonomously in urban environment like a human soldier, and conducted a contest in 2008. South Korea and Israel have been already deploying autonomous armed robot border guards. The South Korean system, the Samsung Techwin SGR-A1 stationary sentry robot, is capable of interrogating suspects, identifying potential enemy intruders, and autonomous firing of its weapon (Krishnan 2009). The unmanned ground vehicle commissioned by the Israeli military, the Guardium, is an autonomous observation and target intercept system.
- 4.
Although we can state that the robot is causally responsible, but the robot is off the hook regarding moral responsibility. Some authors claim that fully autonomous robots can be considered as moral agents (Dennett 1997), but this discussion is beyond the scope of this article and such an attribution unnecessarily complicates the issue of responsibility ascription for immoral actions.
- 5.
If ethical theories do not provide moral principles that can be straightforwardly applied to get the right answer, what then is their role, if any, in applied ethics? Their role is, first, instrumental in discovering the ethical aspects of a problem or situation. Different ethical theories stress different aspects of a situation; consequentialism for example draws attention to how consequences of actions may be morally relevant; deontological theories might draw attention to the moral importance of promises, rights and obligations. And virtue ethics may remind us that certain character traits can be morally relevant. Ethical theories also suggest certain arguments or reasons that can play a role in moral judgments.
- 6.
Besides the substantial cause, military robots also are an expression of, for example, the ‘culture of fear’ and increasing risk-averseness in our society.
- 7.
One of the most cited arguments in support of drones is to avoid the practice of moral disengagement known as dehumanization which is a common cause of violence, murder and potentially genocide.
- 8.
Recent interviews with former members of the Taliban have also revealed the increase in PTSD and other war related mental disorders suffered by their fighters as well as the local population (Newsweek Dec 6, 2010) www.newsweek.com/2010/12/06/do-the-taliban-get-ptsd.html. The importance of setting standards for ethical decision making in the military is thus a shared responsibility as these standards affect not only those that are killed but also those doing the killing and those supporting them.
- 9.
As General Stanley McCrystal (the former commander of the ISAF mission) shared in an interview, while computers are able to process wealth of information they are not capable of understanding it. 3/11/10, www.idga.org/podcenter.cfm?externalid=826&mac=IDGA_OI_Featured_2010&utm_source=idga.org&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=IDGAOptIn&utm_content=11/4/10.
- 10.
- 11.
However, military robots still controlled (as opposed to monitored) by human beings are indeed still able to effectuate ethical decisions made by a remote operator.
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Acknowledgments
This research is part of the research program ‘Moral fitness of military personnel in a networked operation environment’, which is supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) under grant number 313-99-110.
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Royakkers, L., Topolski, A. (2014). Military Robotics & Relationality: Criteria for Ethical Decision-Making. In: van den Hoven, J., Doorn, N., Swierstra, T., Koops, BJ., Romijn, H. (eds) Responsible Innovation 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-8956-1_20
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