Robots can be friendly, they can entertain,
and some can even act as caregivers.
And then there are the others: so-called 'killer robots'—
the kind we've only seen in Hollywood movies—
that destroy and kill without human emotion.
Killer robots sound like something out of a science fiction movie.
The problem is that they're turning into reality,
and then they're not the Terminator robot.
They're not sophisticated robots.
They're the sorts of drones that we're starting to see
turning up on the battlefield in Ukraine.
And increasingly, it's not humans that are controlling those drones,
but it's computers.
It's a simple technical matter to remove any humans
from the control loop and replace them by algorithms.
Tanks, soldiers in trenches—that's how it looked in Russia's invasion
of Ukraine—until artificial intelligence began to be used on both sides—
such as with the Bayraktar drones.
A single one costs over 11 million euros.
Then, the legacy weapon systems of both the Ukrainians
and the Russians, that is, those systems previously not
equipped with AI, were equipped with it.
And these systems changed the war.
On the Russian side, for example, there were glide bombs
that are equipped with AI.
On the Ukrainian side, we see the equipment with AI,
such as drones or, and this is key, the fact that Ukraine was able to
be so effective and successful in the first few months, has to do
with the fact that they had very good situational awareness.
Military conflicts are all about data and evaluating it.
Processing speed is critical.
AI can achieve this— and make tactical decisions.
With highly automated systems, we have to think carefully about
how we organize the division of labor between human and machine.
People have intentions, machines do not have intentions.
And we use these machines, these automated systems, as tools.
Can a drone become a humanoid killer robot?
A Terminator?
The Terminator?
No, that's not possible.
We haven't reached that level of technology yet.
So we do see fascinating YouTube videos from
Boston Dynamics, for example.
We can see that these are machines that have
a high level of performance in the area of motion control,
when they do a somersault or things like that.
That doesn't make them dangerous killer robots, though.
Last year, military spending worldwide rose to
more than two trillion euros—a new record.
The US is in first place with almost 750 billion euros,
but China is also catching up.
Russia increased its military budget by around nine percent in 2022.
If you have an army that works with AI, you have
different tactics than one that works without it.
That is, it's not about putting artificial intelligence
into a weapon system.
It's about changing the whole system: training, tactics, organization.
And it could be that smaller countries that are more agile
in terms of the composition of their military, the cooperation
between civil, military, and industry, that they suddenly have
a head start in bringing data together.
Companies that develop robots for peaceful purposes
are also working on autonomous weapons systems—
and receive money from governments to do so.
Around 60 countries are working on such systems.
The technologies are going to exist.
They're going to be part of our lives.
We're going to have autonomous cars.
We're going to have autonomous trucks, autonomous buses.
There's going to be lots of AI in our lives.
And that technology could be repurposed,
turned into autonomous weapons.
We can't stop that happening,
because we want all those positive uses of AI in our lives,
but we can at least stop arms companies openly developing
and selling such weapons and making them like the Kalashnikovs of today.
One possible solution: stricter regulations.
But this is controversial.
A few EU nations, led by France, are calling for
extensive exemptions for some AI uses in the military.