Roboticist Ronald Arkin argues lethal robots could be more humane than human soldiers

Evidence

To justify his work, he writes, “My personal hope would be that they will never be needed in the present or the future. But man’s tendency toward war seems overwhelming and inevitable.” Alas, if we cannot avoid war, at least let us use our technical abilities to try to make it more ethical, for indeed if we could manage that, it would be “a significant humanitarian achievement.” To be sure … but in what respect could those prospective robot warriors “be more humane on the battlefield than humans”? For a whole series of reasons, in particular thanks to their “precision,” but above all because they can be programmed to respect the law. — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 654

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the chapter’s thread about ‘precision’ as a moral alibi for lethal violence. — connects to: Ethical-robot advocacy lowers moral barriers to deploying lethal robots.; Robot soldiers would enable dictators to crush their own populations safely; Ethical-robot rhetoric is a Trojan horse that lowers moral barriers to killer robots — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 669 (+1 more)

Related

• Robot soldiers would enable dictators to crush their own populations safely (similarity 0.91)
• Ethical-robot advocacy lowers moral barriers to deploying lethal robots. (similarity 0.89)
• The danger of military robots is their incapacity to disobey (similarity 0.84)
• Ethical-robot rhetoric is a Trojan horse that lowers moral barriers to killer robots (similarity 0.82)
• An enemy’s incidental human detail can stop a soldier from firing (similarity 0.79)
• Human emotions protect civilians by restraining lethal military force (similarity 0.79)
• Empathy discourse is repurposed to legitimize mechanized killing (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Ethical-robot rhetoric is a Trojan horse that lowers moral barriers to killer robots #corroborates (0.60) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 669
• The danger of military robots is their incapacity to disobey #responds-to (0.40) — Grégoire Chamayou, A Theory of the Drone, 690