You might suppose Hollywood is good at predicting the future. Indeed, Robert Wallace, head of the CIA’s Office of Technical Service and the US equivalent of MI6’s fictional Q, has recounted how Russian spies to see what technologies might be coming their way.
Author
Toby Walsh
Professor of AI at UNSW, Research Group Leader, UNSW Sydney
Hollywood’s continuing obsession with killer robots might therefore be of significant concern. The newest such movie is Apple TV’s forthcoming .
I never thought I’d write the phrase “sex robot courtroom drama”, but there you go. Based on a by Elizabeth Bear, the plot concerns a billionaire killed by a sex robot that then asks for a lawyer to defend its murderous actions.
The real killer robots
Dolly is the latest in a long line of movies featuring killer robots – including HAL in Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s T-800 robot in the Terminator series. Indeed, conflict between robots and humans was at the centre of the very first feature-length science fiction film, Fritz Lang’s 1927 classic .
But almost all these movies get it wrong. Killer robots won’t be sentient humanoid robots with evil intent. This might make for a dramatic storyline and a box office success, but such technologies are many decades, if not centuries, away.
Indeed, contrary to recent fears, robots may never be sentient.
It’s much simpler technologies we should be worrying about. And these technologies are starting to turn up on the battlefield today in places like Ukraine and .
A war transformed
Movies that feature much simpler armed drones, like Angel has Fallen (2019) and Eye in the Sky (2015), paint perhaps the most accurate picture of .
On the nightly TV news, we see how modern warfare is being transformed by ever-more autonomous drones, tanks, ships and submarines. These robots are only a little more sophisticated than those you can buy in your local hobby store.
And increasingly, the decisions to identify, track and destroy targets are being handed over to their algorithms.
This is taking the world to a dangerous place, with a host of moral, legal and technical problems. Such weapons will, for example, further upset our troubled geopolitical situation. We already see .
And such weapons cross a moral red line into a terrible and terrifying world where unaccountable machines decide who lives and who dies.
Robot manufacturers are, however, starting to push back against this future.
A pledge not to weaponise
Last week, six leading robotics companies pledged they would . The companies include Boston Dynamics, which makes the Atlas humanoid robot, which can , and the Spot robot dog, which looks like it’s .
This isn’t the first time robotics companies have spoken out about this worrying future. Five years ago, I organised signed by Elon Musk and more than 100 founders of other AI and robot companies calling for the United Nations to regulate the use of killer robots. The letter even knocked the Pope into third place for a .
However, the fact that leading robotics companies are pledging not to weaponise their robot platforms is more virtue signalling than anything else.
We have, for example, already seen on clones of Boston Dynamics’ Spot robot dog. And such modified robots have proven effective in action. Iran’s top nuclear scientist was using a robot machine gun in 2020.
Collective action to safeguard our future
The only way we can safeguard against this terrifying future is if nations collectively take action, as they have with chemical weapons, biological weapons and even nuclear weapons.
Such regulation won’t be perfect, just as the regulation of chemical weapons isn’t perfect. But it will prevent arms companies from openly selling such weapons and thus their proliferation.
Therefore, it’s even more important than a pledge from robotics companies to see the UN Human Rights council to explore the human rights implications of new and emerging technologies like autonomous weapons.
Several dozen nations have already called for the UN to regulate killer robots. The European Parliament, the African Union, the UN Secretary General, Nobel peace laureates, church leaders, politicians and thousands of AI and robotics researchers like myself have all called for regulation.
Australian is not a country that has, so far, supported these calls. But if you want to avoid this Hollywood future, you may want to take it up with your political representative next time you see them.
Toby Walsh does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
