I don’t know about you, but I’m going to stop taking out my rage on my toaster. After all, if it chooses to burn my Sunday bagel, it’s autonomous enough to do even more damage.
Christof Heyns, a UN appointee, will present the Human Rights Council with a warning against autonomous robots. In a presentation in Geneva this week, Heyns will call for an international prohibition of what he calls “lethal autonomous robotics”.
Christof, you don’t need to call them “lethal autonomous robotics”. Just call them T-1000’s like the rest of the general public.
Now, there’s no need to stomp on your electric razors right away. If my sense of time is correct, Skynet has yet to be developed. However, we’re pretty darn close, so maybe keep your kids from joining robotics next year.
Heyns’ findings show that countries are rapidly developing weapons at a rate in which a country will likely create a self-determining robotic weapon in the near future.
Bonnie Docherty of Harvard Law’s International Human Rights Clinic co-authored Heyns’ report. She reports, “States are working towards greater and greater autonomy in weapons and the potential is there for such technologies to be developed in the next 10 or 20 years.”
So, in 10 to 20 years, we’re going to have a bunch of Terminators, Benders, and Ian Holmses on our hands, making decisions for us?!
I don’t know about you, but there’s only one robot I trust. And his name is Wall-E. Vicki from Small Wonder is a close second, but even she can have her mischievous moments.
Heyns cites the weaponizing of drones as a forecast of what is to come in military technology. As you probably know, drones were first developed as surveillance devices. However, military strategists (and bad guys in the Bourne Legacy) wanted to take advantage of a drone’s capability of target killing.
This evolution brings us to last week, when the US navy tested a new drone that was able to fly itself, which I think is the premise of Disney’s Planes.
This makes one wonder, is the robot takeover coming sooner than we think? Are we all going to be imprisoned by a bunch of androids one day? Will Edward James Olmos be there to save us when the machines take over?
