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A new global campaign to persuade nations to ban "killer robots" before they reach the production stage is to be launched in the UK by a group of academics, pressure groups and Nobel peace prize laureates.
Robot warfare and autonomous weapons, the next step from unmanned drones, are already being worked on by scientists and will be available within the decade, said Dr. Noel Sharkey, a leading robotics and artificial intelligence expert and professor at Sheffield University.
He believes that development of the weapons is taking place in an effectively unregulated environment, with little attention being paid to moral implications and international law.
The Stop the Killer Robots campaign will be launched in April at the House of Commons and includes many of the groups that successfully campaigned to have international action taken against cluster bombs and landmines. They hope to get a similar global treaty against autonomous weapons.
"These things are not science fiction; they are well into development," said Sharkey. "The research wing of the Pentagon in the U.S. is working on the X47B (unmanned plane) which has supersonic twists and turns with a G-force that no human being could manage, a craft which would take autonomous armed combat anywhere in the planet.
"In America they are already training more drone pilots than real aircraft pilots, looking for young men who are very good at computer games. They are looking at swarms of robots, with perhaps one person watching what they do."
Sharkey insists he is not anti-war but deeply concerned about how quickly science is moving ahead of the presumptions underlying the Geneva convention and the international laws of war.
"There are a lot of people very excited about this technology, in the U.S., at BAE Systems, in China, Israel and Russia, very excited at what is set to become a multibillion-dollar industry. This is going to be big, big money. But actually there is no transparency, no legal process. The laws of war allow for rights of surrender, for prisoner of war rights, for a human face to take judgments on collateral damage. Humans are thinking, sentient beings. If a robot goes wrong, who is accountable? Certainly not the robot."
He disputes the justification that deploying robot soldiers would potentially save lives of real soldiers. "Autonomous robotic weapons won't get tired, they won't seek revenge if their colleague is killed, but neither will my washing machine. No one on your side might get killed, but what effect will you be having on the other side, not just in lives but in attitudes and anger?
"The public is not being invited to have a view on the morals of all of this. We won't hear about it until China has sold theirs to Iran. That's why we are forming this campaign to look at a pre-emptive ban.
"The idea is that it's a machine that will find a target, decide if it is the right target and then kill it. No human involvement. Article 36 in the Geneva Convention says that any new weapon has to take into account whether it can distinguish and discriminate between combatant and civilian, but the problem here is that an autonomous robot is not a weapon until you clip on the gun."
At present, Sharkey says, there is no mechanism in a robot's "mind" to distinguish between a child holding up a sweet and an adult pointing a gun. "We are struggling to get them to distinguish between a human being and a car. We have already seen utter incompetence in the use of drones, operators making a lot of mistakes and not being properly supervised."
Last November the international campaign group Human Rights Watch produced a 50-page report, Losing Humanity: the Case Against Killer Robots, outlining concerns about fully autonomous weapons.
"Giving machines the power to decide who lives and dies on the battlefield would take technology too far," said Steve Goose, arms division director at Human Rights Watch. "Human control of robotic warfare is essential to minimizing civilian deaths and injuries."
US political activist Jody Williams, who won a Nobel peace prize for her work at the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, is expected to join Sharkey at the launch at the House of Commons. Williams said she was confident that a pre-emptive ban on autonomous weapons could be achieved in the same way as the international embargo on anti-personnel landmines. "I know we can do the same thing with killer robots. I know we can stop them before they hit the battlefield," said Williams, who chairs the Nobel Women's Initiative.
"Killer robots loom over our future if we do not take action to ban them now," she said. "The six Nobel peace laureates involved in the Nobel Women's Initiative fully support the call for an international treaty to ban fully autonomous weaponized robots."
영화에 등장하는 '터미네이터'처럼 사람의 명령 없이 독자적으로 전투를 수행하는 이른바 '킬러로봇(살상용 로봇)'의 등장을 막으려면 국제적 캠페인에 시동이 걸렸다.
영국 일요신문인 옵서버는 로봇 관련 학자들과 국제 인권단체, 노벨평화상 수상자들이 오는 4월 영국 하원에 모여 '킬러로봇 반대'(Stop the Killer Robots') 캠페인을 발족한다고 23일(현지시간) 보도했다.
이들은 무인기(드론)의 후속 단계로 연구개발되고 있는 전투 로봇과 자동화 무기들이 인류의 생존과 평화에 중대한 위협이 되고 있다며 실전에 배치되기 전에 관련 연구개발을 전면 중단할 것을 촉구할 방침이다.
캠페인에는 대인지뢰와 확산탄 반대 운동을 전개해온 공로로 1997년 노벨평화상을 받은 조디 윌리엄스(63)가 참여할 것으로 전해졌다.
특히 그가 이끄는 '노벨 여성 이니셔티브'(Nobel Women’s Initiative)에 속한 노벨평화상 수상자 6명도 이 캠페인을 전폭 지지하고 있어 참여 가능성이 큰 것으로 알려졌다.
캠페인을 주도하는 영국 셰필드대 로봇·인공지능 전문가 노엘 샤키 교수는 '킬러로봇은 더는 SF소설(과학 가상소설)이 아니다'며 '앞으로 10년 내에 현실화될 것'이라고 경고했다.
그는 특히 '과학자들의 킬러로봇 연구가 윤리규정이나 국제법의 관심권 밖에서 아무런 통제도 받지 않은 채 진행되고 있는 점이 문제'라며 '반전주의자는 아니지만 이 같은 연구개발이 제네바 협약과 국제규칙을 어길 가능성이 있다'고 우려했다.
1949년 체결된 제네바 협약은 전쟁포로와 부상자 등 더는 전투에 가담할 수 없는 사람들과 민간인을 보호하는 교전규칙을 담고 있다. 그러나 킬러로봇은 '사탕을 든 아이와 총을 겨누는 군인을 식별할 수 있는 인식체계가 없다'는 게 샤키 교수의 지적이다.
샤키 박사는 또 미국 국방부의 한 연구소가 연구하는 인공지능 스텔스 무인폭격기인 'X-47B'가 인간이 견디면서 조종할 수 있는 중력 한계를 넘어 초음속 비행을 하는 기능을 갖추고 있다고 주장했다.
그는 '미국은 실제 조종사보다 더 많은 드론 조종사들을 훈련하고 있다'며 '특히 컴퓨터 게임에 능한 젊은이들을 찾고 있다'고 비판했다.
이 같은 국제적 캠페인과 함께 오는 11월 영국 케임브리지대에서는 로봇의 위험성을 본격적으로 연구하는 '실존적 위험 연구 센터'(CSER)가 설립된다.
센터에는 세계적 우주론 석학이자 영국 왕립학회 소속 마틴 리즈가 공동 설립자의 한 명으로 참여한다. 리즈는 2003년 발간한 저서 '이것이 우리의 마지막 세기인가'에서 인간성의 파괴로 인해 2천100년경에는 인류가 멸망할 수 있다고 경고한 바 있다.
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