Q&A: The robot wars have arrived<\/h1>\n by Candace Lombardi<\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/p>\n\n\n![\"P.W.](\"\")
<\/p>\nP.W. Singer<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Just as the computer and ARPAnet evolved into the PC and Internet, robots are poised to integrate into everyday life in ways we can\u2019t even imagine, thanks in large part to research funded by the U.S. military.<\/p>\n
Many people are excited about the military\u2019s newfound interest and funding of robotics, but few are considering its ramifications on war in general.<\/p>\n
P.W. Singer<\/a>, senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution<\/a>, went behind the scenes of the robotics world to write \u201cWired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\nSinger took time from his book tour to talk with CNET about the start of a revolution tech insiders predicted<\/a>, but so many others missed.<\/p>\nQ: Your book is purposely not the typical think tank book. It\u2019s filled with just as many humorous anecdotes about people\u2019s personal lives and pop culture as it is with statistics, technology, and history. You say you did this because robotic development has been greatly influenced by the human imagination? <\/strong>
Singer: Look, to write on robots in my field is a risky thing. Robots were seen as this thing of science fiction even though they\u2019re not. So I decided to double down, you know? If I was going to risk it in one way, why not in another way? It\u2019s my own insurgency on the boring, staid way people talk about this incredibly important thing, which is war. Most of the books on war and its dynamics\u2013to be blunt\u2013are, oddly enough, boring. And it means the public doesn\u2019t actually have an understanding of the dynamics as they should.<\/p>\nIt seems like we\u2019re just at the beginning here. You quote Bill Gates comparing robots now to what computers were in the eighties. <\/strong>
Singer: Yes, the military is a primary buyer right now and it\u2019s using them (robots) for a limited set of applications. And yes, in each area we prove they can be utilized you\u2019ll see a massive expansion. That\u2019s all correct, but then I think it\u2019s even beyond what he was saying. No one sitting back with a computer in 1980 said, \u201cOh, yes, these things are going to have a ripple effect on our society and politics such that there\u2019s going to be a political debate about privacy in an online world, and mothers in Peoria are going to be concerned about child predators on this thing called Facebook.\u201d It\u2019ll be the same way with the impact on war and in robotics; a ripple effect in areas we\u2019re not even aware of yet.<\/p>\nRight now, rudimentary as they are, we have autonomous and remote-controlled robots while most of the people we\u2019re fighting don\u2019t. What\u2019s that doing to our image? <\/strong>
Singer: The leading newspaper editor in Lebanon described\u2013and he\u2019s actually describing this as there is a drone above him at the time\u2013that these things show you\u2019re afraid, you\u2019re not man enough to fight us face-to-face, it shows your cowardice, all we have to do to defeat you is just kill a few of your soldiers.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s playing like cowardice? <\/strong>
Singer: Yeah, it\u2019s like every revolution. You know, when gunpowder is first used people think that\u2019s cowardly. Then they figure it out and it has all sorts of other ripple effects.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s war going to look like once robot warriors become autonomous and ubiquitous for both sides? <\/strong>
Singer: I think if we\u2019re looking at the realm of science fiction, less so \u201cStar Wars: The Clone Wars\u201d and more so the world of \u201cBlade Runner\u201d where it\u2019s this mix between incredible technologies, but also the dirt and grime of poverty in the city. I guess this shows where I come down on these issues. The future of war is more and more machines, but it\u2019s still also insurgencies, terrorism, you name it.<\/p>\nWhat seems most likely in this scenario\u2013at least in the near term\u2013is this continuation of teams of robots and humans working together<\/a>, each doing what they\u2019re good at\u2026Maybe the human as the quarterback and the robots as the players with the humans calling out plays, making decisions, and the robots carrying them out. However, just like on a football field, things change. The wide receivers can alter the play, and that seems to be where we\u2019re headed.<\/p>\nHow will robot warfare change our international laws of war? If an autonomous robot mistakenly takes out 20 little girls playing soccer in the street and people are outraged, is the programmer going to get the blame? The manufacturer? The commander who sent in the robot fleet? <\/strong>
Singer: That\u2019s the essence of the problem of trying to apply a set of laws that are so old they qualify for Medicare to these kind of 21st-century dilemmas that come with this 21st-century technology. It\u2019s also the kind of question that you might have once only asked at Comic-Con<\/a> and now it\u2019s a very real live question at the Pentagon.<\/p>\nI went around trying to get the answer to this sort of question meeting with people not only in the military but also in the International Committee of the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch. We\u2019re at a loss as to how to answer that question right now. The robotics companies are only thinking in terms of product liability\u2026and international law is simply overwhelmed or basically ignorant of this technology. There\u2019s a great scene in the book where two senior leaders within Human Rights Watch get in an argument in front of me of which laws might be most useful in such a situation.<\/p>\n
Is this where they bring up Star Trek? <\/strong>
Singer: Yeah, one\u2019s bringing up the Geneva Conventions<\/a> and the other one\u2019s pointing to the Star Trek Prime Directive<\/a>.<\/p>\nYou say in your book that except for a few refusenicks, most scientists are definitely not subscribing to Isaac Asimov\u2019s laws<\/a>. What then generally are the ethics of these roboticists? <\/strong>
Singer: The people who are building these systems are excited by the possibilities of the technology<\/a>. But the field of robotics, it\u2019s a very young field. It\u2019s not like medicine that has an ethical code. It\u2019s not done what the field of genetics has, where it\u2019s begun to wrestle with the ethics of what they\u2019re working on and the ripple effects it has on the society. That\u2019s not happening in the robotics field, except in isolated instances.<\/p>\nWhat military robotic tech is likely to migrate over to local law enforcement or the consumer world? <\/strong>
Singer: I think we\u2019re already starting to see some of the early stages of that\u2026I think this is the other part that Gates was saying: we get to the point where we stop calling them computers. You know, I have a computer in my pocket right now. It\u2019s a cell phone. I just don\u2019t call it a computer. The new Lexus parallel-parks itself. Do we call it a robot car<\/a>? No, but it\u2019s kind of doing something robotic.<\/p>\nYou know, I\u2019m the guy coming out of the world of political science, so it opens up these fun debates. Take the question of ethics and robots. How about me? Is it my second amendment right to have a gun-armed robot? I mean, I\u2019m not hiring my own gun robots, but Homeland Security is already flying drones, and police departments are already purchasing them<\/a>.<\/p>\nExplain how robotic warfare is \u201copen source\u201d warfare. <\/strong>
Singer: It\u2019s much like what\u2019s happened in the software industry going open source, the idea that this technology is not something that requires a massive industrial structure to build. Much like open source software, not only can almost anyone access it, but also anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit, and in this case of very wicked entrepreneurial spirit, can improve upon it. All sorts of actors, not just high-end military<\/a>, can access high-end military technologies\u2026Hezbollah is not a state. However, Hezbollah flew four drones at Israel. Take this down to the individual level and I think one of the darkest quotes comes from the DARPA scientist who said, and I quote, \u201cFor $50,000 I could shut down Manhattan.\u201d The potential of an al-Qaeda 2.0 is made far more lethal with these technologies, but also the next generation of a Timothy McVeigh or Unabomber is multiplying their capability with these technologies.<\/p>\nThe U.S. military said in a statement this week that it plans to pull 12,000 troops out of Iraq by the fall. Do you think robots will have a hand in helping to get to that number? <\/strong>
Singer: Most definitely.<\/p>\nHow? <\/strong>
Singer: The utilization of the Predator operations<\/a> is allowing us to accomplish certain goals there without troops on the grounds.<\/p>\nIs this going to lead to more of what you call the cubicle warriors or the armchair warriors? They\u2019re in the U.S. operating on this end, and then going to their kid\u2019s PTA meeting at the end of the day? <\/strong>
Singer: Oh, most definitely. Look, the Air Force this year is putting out more unmanned pilots that manned pilots.<\/p>\nExplain how soldiers now come ready-trained because of our video games. <\/strong>
Singer: The military is very smartly free-riding off of the video game industry, off the designs in terms of the human interface, using the Xbox controllers, PlayStation controllers. The Microsofts and Sonys of the world have spent millions designing the system that fits perfectly in your hand. Why not use it? They\u2019re also free-riding off this entire generation that\u2019s come in already trained in the use of these systems.<\/p>\nThere\u2019s another aspect though, which is the mentality people bring to bear when using these systems. It really struck me when one of the people involved in Predator operations described what it was like to take out an enemy from afar, what it was like to kill. He said, \u201cIt\u2019s like a video game.\u201d That\u2019s a very odd reference, but also a telling reference for this experience of killing and how it\u2019s changing in our generation.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s making them more removed from the morality of it? <\/strong>
Singer: It\u2019s the fundamental difference between the bomber pilots of WWII and even the bomber pilots of today. It\u2019s disconnection from risk on both a physical and psychological plain.<\/p>\nWhen my grandfather went to war in the Pacific, he went to a place where there was such danger he might not ever come home again. You compare that to the drone pilot experience. Not only what it\u2019s like to kill, but the whole experience of going to war is getting up, getting into their Toyota Corolla, going in to work, killing enemy combatants from afar, getting in their car, and driving home. So 20 minutes after being at war, they\u2019re back at home and talking to their kid about their homework at the dinner table. So this whole meaning of the term \u201cgoing to war\u201d that\u2019s held true for 5,000 years is changing.<\/p>\n
What do you think is the most dangerous military robot out there now? <\/strong>
Singer: It all hinges on the definition of the term dangerous. The system that\u2019s been most incredibly lethal in terms of consequences on the battlefield so far if you ask military commanders is the Predator. They describe it as the most useful system, manned or unmanned, in our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Eleven out of the twenty al-Qaeda leaders we\u2019ve gotten, we\u2019ve gotten via a drone strike. Now, dangerous can have other meanings. The work on evolutionary software scares the shit out of me.<\/p>\nYou\u2019re saying we\u2019re gonna get to a HAL situation? <\/strong>
Singer: Maybe it\u2019s just cause I\u2019ve grown up on a diet of all that sci-fi, but the evolutionary software stuff does spook me out a little bit. Oh, and robots that can replicate themselves. We\u2019re not there yet, but that\u2019s another like \u201cwhoa!\u201d<\/p>\nPeople have finally got the attention of companies and governments to look ahead to 2020, 2040, 2050 in terms of the environment and green technology. But as you said in your book, that\u2019s not happening with robotics issues. Why do you think that is? <\/strong>
Singer: When it comes to the issue of war, we\u2019re exceptionally uncomfortable looking forward, mainly because so many people have gotten it so wrong. People in policymaker positions, policy adviser positions, and the people making the decisions are woefully ignorant in what\u2019s happening in technology not only five years from now, not only now, but where we were five years ago. You have people describing robotics as \u201cmere science fiction\u201d when we\u2019re talking about having already 12,000 (robots) on the ground, 7,000 in the air. During this book tour, I was in this meeting with a very senior Pentagon adviser, top of the field, very big name. He said, \u201cYeah this technology stuff is so amazing. I bet one day we\u2019ll have this technology where like one day the Internet will be able to look like a video game, and it will be three-dimensional, I\u2019ll bet.\u201d<\/p>\n(laughing<\/em>) And meanwhile, your wife\u2019s at Linden Labs. <\/strong>
Singer: (laughing<\/em>) Yeah, it\u2019s Second Life. And that\u2019s not anything new.<\/p>\nAt least five years old, yeah. <\/strong>
Singer: And you don\u2019t have to be a technology person to be aware of it. I mean, it\u2019s been covered by CNN. It appeared on \u201cThe Office\u201d and \u201cCSI.\u201d You just have to be aware of pop culture to know. And so it was this thing that he was describing as it might happen one day, and it happened five years ago. Then the people that do work on the technology and are aware of it, they tend to either be: head-in-the-sand in terms of \u201cI\u2019m just working on my thing, I don\u2019t care about the effects of it\u201d; or \u201cI\u2019m optimistic. Oh these systems are great. They\u2019re only gonna work out for the best.\u201d They forget that this is a real world. They\u2019re kind of like the atomic scientists.<\/p>\nObviously the hope is that robots will do all the dirty work of warfare. But warfare is inherently messy, unpredictable, and often worse than expectations. How would a roboticized war be any different in that respect? <\/strong>
Singer: In no way. That\u2019s the fundamental argument of the book. While we may have Moore\u2019s Law in place, we still haven\u2019t gotten rid of Murphy\u2019s Law. So we have a technology that is giving us incredible capabilities that we couldn\u2019t even have imagined a few years ago, let alone had in place. But the fog of war is not being lifted as Rumsfeld once claimed absurdly.<\/p>\nYou may be getting new technological capabilities, but you are also creating new human dilemmas. And it\u2019s those dilemmas that are really the revolutionary aspect of this. What are the laws that surround this and how do you insure accountability in this setting? At what point do we have to become concerned about our weapons becoming a threat to ourselves? This future of war is again a mix of more and more machines being used to fight<\/a>, but the wars themselves are still about our human realities. They\u2019re still driven by our human failings, and the ripple effects are still because of our human politics, our human laws. And it\u2019s the cross between the two that we have to understand.<\/div>\n Candace Lombardi is a journalist who divides her time between the U.S. and the U.K. Whether it\u2019s cars, robots, personal gadgets, or industrial machines, she enjoys examining the moving parts that keep our world rotating. Email her at CandaceLombardi@gmail.com.<\/a> She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"March 12, 2009 10:00 AM PDT Q&A: The robot wars have arrived by Candace Lombardi P.W. Singer Just as the computer and ARPAnet evolved into the PC and Internet, robots are poised to integrate into everyday life in ways we can\u2019t even imagine, thanks in large part to research funded by the U.S. military. Many [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,38,20,9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense","category-engineering","category-futurism","category-military","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52278,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/52278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
P.W. Singer<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Just as the computer and ARPAnet evolved into the PC and Internet, robots are poised to integrate into everyday life in ways we can\u2019t even imagine, thanks in large part to research funded by the U.S. military.<\/p>\n
Many people are excited about the military\u2019s newfound interest and funding of robotics, but few are considering its ramifications on war in general.<\/p>\n
P.W. Singer<\/a>, senior fellow and director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution<\/a>, went behind the scenes of the robotics world to write \u201cWired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Singer took time from his book tour to talk with CNET about the start of a revolution tech insiders predicted<\/a>, but so many others missed.<\/p>\n Q: Your book is purposely not the typical think tank book. It\u2019s filled with just as many humorous anecdotes about people\u2019s personal lives and pop culture as it is with statistics, technology, and history. You say you did this because robotic development has been greatly influenced by the human imagination? <\/strong> It seems like we\u2019re just at the beginning here. You quote Bill Gates comparing robots now to what computers were in the eighties. <\/strong> Right now, rudimentary as they are, we have autonomous and remote-controlled robots while most of the people we\u2019re fighting don\u2019t. What\u2019s that doing to our image? <\/strong> It\u2019s playing like cowardice? <\/strong> What\u2019s war going to look like once robot warriors become autonomous and ubiquitous for both sides? <\/strong> What seems most likely in this scenario\u2013at least in the near term\u2013is this continuation of teams of robots and humans working together<\/a>, each doing what they\u2019re good at\u2026Maybe the human as the quarterback and the robots as the players with the humans calling out plays, making decisions, and the robots carrying them out. However, just like on a football field, things change. The wide receivers can alter the play, and that seems to be where we\u2019re headed.<\/p>\n How will robot warfare change our international laws of war? If an autonomous robot mistakenly takes out 20 little girls playing soccer in the street and people are outraged, is the programmer going to get the blame? The manufacturer? The commander who sent in the robot fleet? <\/strong> I went around trying to get the answer to this sort of question meeting with people not only in the military but also in the International Committee of the Red Cross and Human Rights Watch. We\u2019re at a loss as to how to answer that question right now. The robotics companies are only thinking in terms of product liability\u2026and international law is simply overwhelmed or basically ignorant of this technology. There\u2019s a great scene in the book where two senior leaders within Human Rights Watch get in an argument in front of me of which laws might be most useful in such a situation.<\/p>\n Is this where they bring up Star Trek? <\/strong> You say in your book that except for a few refusenicks, most scientists are definitely not subscribing to Isaac Asimov\u2019s laws<\/a>. What then generally are the ethics of these roboticists? <\/strong> What military robotic tech is likely to migrate over to local law enforcement or the consumer world? <\/strong> You know, I\u2019m the guy coming out of the world of political science, so it opens up these fun debates. Take the question of ethics and robots. How about me? Is it my second amendment right to have a gun-armed robot? I mean, I\u2019m not hiring my own gun robots, but Homeland Security is already flying drones, and police departments are already purchasing them<\/a>.<\/p>\n Explain how robotic warfare is \u201copen source\u201d warfare. <\/strong> The U.S. military said in a statement this week that it plans to pull 12,000 troops out of Iraq by the fall. Do you think robots will have a hand in helping to get to that number? <\/strong> How? <\/strong> Is this going to lead to more of what you call the cubicle warriors or the armchair warriors? They\u2019re in the U.S. operating on this end, and then going to their kid\u2019s PTA meeting at the end of the day? <\/strong> Explain how soldiers now come ready-trained because of our video games. <\/strong> There\u2019s another aspect though, which is the mentality people bring to bear when using these systems. It really struck me when one of the people involved in Predator operations described what it was like to take out an enemy from afar, what it was like to kill. He said, \u201cIt\u2019s like a video game.\u201d That\u2019s a very odd reference, but also a telling reference for this experience of killing and how it\u2019s changing in our generation.<\/p>\n It\u2019s making them more removed from the morality of it? <\/strong> When my grandfather went to war in the Pacific, he went to a place where there was such danger he might not ever come home again. You compare that to the drone pilot experience. Not only what it\u2019s like to kill, but the whole experience of going to war is getting up, getting into their Toyota Corolla, going in to work, killing enemy combatants from afar, getting in their car, and driving home. So 20 minutes after being at war, they\u2019re back at home and talking to their kid about their homework at the dinner table. So this whole meaning of the term \u201cgoing to war\u201d that\u2019s held true for 5,000 years is changing.<\/p>\n What do you think is the most dangerous military robot out there now? <\/strong> You\u2019re saying we\u2019re gonna get to a HAL situation? <\/strong> People have finally got the attention of companies and governments to look ahead to 2020, 2040, 2050 in terms of the environment and green technology. But as you said in your book, that\u2019s not happening with robotics issues. Why do you think that is? <\/strong> (laughing<\/em>) And meanwhile, your wife\u2019s at Linden Labs. <\/strong> At least five years old, yeah. <\/strong> Obviously the hope is that robots will do all the dirty work of warfare. But warfare is inherently messy, unpredictable, and often worse than expectations. How would a roboticized war be any different in that respect? <\/strong> You may be getting new technological capabilities, but you are also creating new human dilemmas. And it\u2019s those dilemmas that are really the revolutionary aspect of this. What are the laws that surround this and how do you insure accountability in this setting? At what point do we have to become concerned about our weapons becoming a threat to ourselves? This future of war is again a mix of more and more machines being used to fight<\/a>, but the wars themselves are still about our human realities. They\u2019re still driven by our human failings, and the ripple effects are still because of our human politics, our human laws. And it\u2019s the cross between the two that we have to understand.<\/div>\n March 12, 2009 10:00 AM PDT Q&A: The robot wars have arrived by Candace Lombardi P.W. Singer Just as the computer and ARPAnet evolved into the PC and Internet, robots are poised to integrate into everyday life in ways we can\u2019t even imagine, thanks in large part to research funded by the U.S. military. Many [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,38,20,9,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense","category-engineering","category-futurism","category-military","category-robotics-ai"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=360"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52278,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/360\/revisions\/52278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Singer: Look, to write on robots in my field is a risky thing. Robots were seen as this thing of science fiction even though they\u2019re not. So I decided to double down, you know? If I was going to risk it in one way, why not in another way? It\u2019s my own insurgency on the boring, staid way people talk about this incredibly important thing, which is war. Most of the books on war and its dynamics\u2013to be blunt\u2013are, oddly enough, boring. And it means the public doesn\u2019t actually have an understanding of the dynamics as they should.<\/p>\n
Singer: Yes, the military is a primary buyer right now and it\u2019s using them (robots) for a limited set of applications. And yes, in each area we prove they can be utilized you\u2019ll see a massive expansion. That\u2019s all correct, but then I think it\u2019s even beyond what he was saying. No one sitting back with a computer in 1980 said, \u201cOh, yes, these things are going to have a ripple effect on our society and politics such that there\u2019s going to be a political debate about privacy in an online world, and mothers in Peoria are going to be concerned about child predators on this thing called Facebook.\u201d It\u2019ll be the same way with the impact on war and in robotics; a ripple effect in areas we\u2019re not even aware of yet.<\/p>\n
Singer: The leading newspaper editor in Lebanon described\u2013and he\u2019s actually describing this as there is a drone above him at the time\u2013that these things show you\u2019re afraid, you\u2019re not man enough to fight us face-to-face, it shows your cowardice, all we have to do to defeat you is just kill a few of your soldiers.<\/p>\n
Singer: Yeah, it\u2019s like every revolution. You know, when gunpowder is first used people think that\u2019s cowardly. Then they figure it out and it has all sorts of other ripple effects.<\/p>\n
Singer: I think if we\u2019re looking at the realm of science fiction, less so \u201cStar Wars: The Clone Wars\u201d and more so the world of \u201cBlade Runner\u201d where it\u2019s this mix between incredible technologies, but also the dirt and grime of poverty in the city. I guess this shows where I come down on these issues. The future of war is more and more machines, but it\u2019s still also insurgencies, terrorism, you name it.<\/p>\n
Singer: That\u2019s the essence of the problem of trying to apply a set of laws that are so old they qualify for Medicare to these kind of 21st-century dilemmas that come with this 21st-century technology. It\u2019s also the kind of question that you might have once only asked at Comic-Con<\/a> and now it\u2019s a very real live question at the Pentagon.<\/p>\n
Singer: Yeah, one\u2019s bringing up the Geneva Conventions<\/a> and the other one\u2019s pointing to the Star Trek Prime Directive<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Singer: The people who are building these systems are excited by the possibilities of the technology<\/a>. But the field of robotics, it\u2019s a very young field. It\u2019s not like medicine that has an ethical code. It\u2019s not done what the field of genetics has, where it\u2019s begun to wrestle with the ethics of what they\u2019re working on and the ripple effects it has on the society. That\u2019s not happening in the robotics field, except in isolated instances.<\/p>\n
Singer: I think we\u2019re already starting to see some of the early stages of that\u2026I think this is the other part that Gates was saying: we get to the point where we stop calling them computers. You know, I have a computer in my pocket right now. It\u2019s a cell phone. I just don\u2019t call it a computer. The new Lexus parallel-parks itself. Do we call it a robot car<\/a>? No, but it\u2019s kind of doing something robotic.<\/p>\n
Singer: It\u2019s much like what\u2019s happened in the software industry going open source, the idea that this technology is not something that requires a massive industrial structure to build. Much like open source software, not only can almost anyone access it, but also anyone with an entrepreneurial spirit, and in this case of very wicked entrepreneurial spirit, can improve upon it. All sorts of actors, not just high-end military<\/a>, can access high-end military technologies\u2026Hezbollah is not a state. However, Hezbollah flew four drones at Israel. Take this down to the individual level and I think one of the darkest quotes comes from the DARPA scientist who said, and I quote, \u201cFor $50,000 I could shut down Manhattan.\u201d The potential of an al-Qaeda 2.0 is made far more lethal with these technologies, but also the next generation of a Timothy McVeigh or Unabomber is multiplying their capability with these technologies.<\/p>\n
Singer: Most definitely.<\/p>\n
Singer: The utilization of the Predator operations<\/a> is allowing us to accomplish certain goals there without troops on the grounds.<\/p>\n
Singer: Oh, most definitely. Look, the Air Force this year is putting out more unmanned pilots that manned pilots.<\/p>\n
Singer: The military is very smartly free-riding off of the video game industry, off the designs in terms of the human interface, using the Xbox controllers, PlayStation controllers. The Microsofts and Sonys of the world have spent millions designing the system that fits perfectly in your hand. Why not use it? They\u2019re also free-riding off this entire generation that\u2019s come in already trained in the use of these systems.<\/p>\n
Singer: It\u2019s the fundamental difference between the bomber pilots of WWII and even the bomber pilots of today. It\u2019s disconnection from risk on both a physical and psychological plain.<\/p>\n
Singer: It all hinges on the definition of the term dangerous. The system that\u2019s been most incredibly lethal in terms of consequences on the battlefield so far if you ask military commanders is the Predator. They describe it as the most useful system, manned or unmanned, in our operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. Eleven out of the twenty al-Qaeda leaders we\u2019ve gotten, we\u2019ve gotten via a drone strike. Now, dangerous can have other meanings. The work on evolutionary software scares the shit out of me.<\/p>\n
Singer: Maybe it\u2019s just cause I\u2019ve grown up on a diet of all that sci-fi, but the evolutionary software stuff does spook me out a little bit. Oh, and robots that can replicate themselves. We\u2019re not there yet, but that\u2019s another like \u201cwhoa!\u201d<\/p>\n
Singer: When it comes to the issue of war, we\u2019re exceptionally uncomfortable looking forward, mainly because so many people have gotten it so wrong. People in policymaker positions, policy adviser positions, and the people making the decisions are woefully ignorant in what\u2019s happening in technology not only five years from now, not only now, but where we were five years ago. You have people describing robotics as \u201cmere science fiction\u201d when we\u2019re talking about having already 12,000 (robots) on the ground, 7,000 in the air. During this book tour, I was in this meeting with a very senior Pentagon adviser, top of the field, very big name. He said, \u201cYeah this technology stuff is so amazing. I bet one day we\u2019ll have this technology where like one day the Internet will be able to look like a video game, and it will be three-dimensional, I\u2019ll bet.\u201d<\/p>\n
Singer: (laughing<\/em>) Yeah, it\u2019s Second Life. And that\u2019s not anything new.<\/p>\n
Singer: And you don\u2019t have to be a technology person to be aware of it. I mean, it\u2019s been covered by CNN. It appeared on \u201cThe Office\u201d and \u201cCSI.\u201d You just have to be aware of pop culture to know. And so it was this thing that he was describing as it might happen one day, and it happened five years ago. Then the people that do work on the technology and are aware of it, they tend to either be: head-in-the-sand in terms of \u201cI\u2019m just working on my thing, I don\u2019t care about the effects of it\u201d; or \u201cI\u2019m optimistic. Oh these systems are great. They\u2019re only gonna work out for the best.\u201d They forget that this is a real world. They\u2019re kind of like the atomic scientists.<\/p>\n
Singer: In no way. That\u2019s the fundamental argument of the book. While we may have Moore\u2019s Law in place, we still haven\u2019t gotten rid of Murphy\u2019s Law. So we have a technology that is giving us incredible capabilities that we couldn\u2019t even have imagined a few years ago, let alone had in place. But the fog of war is not being lifted as Rumsfeld once claimed absurdly.<\/p>\n Candace Lombardi is a journalist who divides her time between the U.S. and the U.K. Whether it\u2019s cars, robots, personal gadgets, or industrial machines, she enjoys examining the moving parts that keep our world rotating. Email her at CandaceLombardi@gmail.com.<\/a> She is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not a current employee of CNET.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"