CONOPS

So the past few weeks have seen a lot of talk in the media about robot rights and ethics. I don’t have much to say about all this, since the discussions are largely Asmovian, and I think it is pretty clear that we need to move beyond Asmiov if we are ever going to actually integrate robots into our lives. To be clear, I appreciate Asimov, but his Laws are grounded in the assumption that robots exist instrumentally (see: the Second Law), and I think this view is fundamentally misguided.

In any case, we need some way of talking about what robots can and can’t do. The Naval Surface Warfare Center has taken up the challenge with a proposed CONOPS for use of autonomous weapons (Warning: PDF). And here it is:

Let the machines target other machines
– Specifically, let’s design our armed unmanned systems to automatically ID, target, and neutralize or destroy the weapons used by our enemies – not the people using the weapons.
– This gives us the possibility of disarming a threat force without the need for killing them.
– We can equip our machines with non-lethal technologies for the purpose of convincing the enemy to abandon their weapons prior to our machines destroying the weapons, and lethal weapons to kill their weapons.

Let men target men
– In those instances where we find it necessary to target the human (i.e. to disable the command structure), the armed unmanned systems can be remotely controllable by human operators who are “in-the-weaponscontrol-loop”

Provide a “Dial-a-Level” of autonomy to switch from one to the other mode.
Well, OK. Maybe we still have some work to do.

(via Engadget)