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From the article.
The French armed forces should be authorised to use autonomous weapons, known as killer robots, in certain strict conditions, a defence ministry report has advised.
The Defence Ethics Committee, a military and civilian body, set out one of the most elaborate moral cases by a western state for the artificial intelligence systems that are expected to transform warfare.
The report, ordered by Florence Parly, the defence minister, came as debate arose over the French army’s use in battle exercises of Spot, a robot dog used by some US police forces.
The robot produced by Boston Dynamics was used by cadet officers at the Saint-Cyr military college in simulated street fighting. Over the past decade about 30 countries and aid groups have been campaigning for a global ban on the weapons as morally repugnant.
The western powers, including the US, Britain and France, have refused to renounce their development because the Chinese and Russians are racing to put them into service — and terrorists are not far behind. Armed drones already operate under human supervision. The French committee called for a ban on independent systems “programmed to be able to change their rules of operation”. It said, however, that French forces could use “partially autonomous” killing systems to identify and engage with targets while keeping human operators informed. The controllers could stop the devices.
The report said that automation would become essential to cope with the speed of future warfare as missiles were approaching at five times the speed of sound. The French analysis echoes British statements that weapons with autonomous functions must have human oversight. The UK used an early version of autonomy in Libya in 2011. Tornado jets fired Brimstone “fire-and-forget” missiles that chose their own targets and destroyed military vehicles. Experts say that the fine distinction between partial and full autonomy may become blurred in battle. Armed drones can already fire at targets without an operator’s order. Robot naval vessels and tanks are being developed.
France was behind the creation last week of a £6.8 billion European Union fund to increase research in military technology. Thierry Breton, the French commissioner for the internal market, said: “We must increasingly be able to take our security into our own hands.”
Boston Dynamics said that it had not been warned that the 31kg Spot would be used in a battlefield situation. “We do not want any customer using the robot to harm people,” Michael Perry, the company’s vice-president, told The Verge website. “This forward deployment model . . . is something that we need to better understand to determine whether it is actively being used to harm people.”
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Autonomous weapons - should we go down this path (Read 1410 times)
