[Tyler]

Can Military Robots be More Ethical than Human Soldiers?
     

Several readers sent us links to the NY Times story, "A
Soldier, Taking Orders From Its Ethical Judgment Center". The
article discusses the ongoing ethical debate about autonomous military
robots that will make their own decisions about life or death on the
battlefield. Ronald Arkin
of Georgia Tech says that while he doesn't
believe autonomous robots can be perfectly ethical, "my research
hypothesis is that intelligent robots can behave more ethically in the
battlefield than humans currently can." This may not be as hard as
it sounds. A 2006 survey found that less than half of the soldiers
serving in Iraq said that, "noncombatants should be treated with
dignity and respect, and 17 percent said all civilians should be treated
as insurgents."  For more details, see the 2006
survey on the troops mental health (PDF format) and Ronald Arkin
paper, "Governing
Lethal Behavior: Embedding Ethic in a Hybrid
Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture" (PDF format). Also see
our many previous articles on ethical concerns about war robots.
   

http://robots.net/article/2701.html