WASHINGTON: Amazon, Microsoft and Intel are among leading tech companies putting the world at risk through killer robot development, according to a report that surveyed major players from the sector about their stance on lethal autonomous weapons.
Dutch NGO Pax ranked 50 companies by three criteria: whether they were developing technology that could be relevant to deadly AI, whether they were working on related military projects, and if they had committed to abstaining from contributing in the future.
“Why are companies like Microsoft and Amazon not denying that they’re currently developing these highly controversial weapons, which could decide to kill people without direct human involvement?” said Frank Slijper, lead author of the report published this week.
The use of AI to allow weapon systems to autonomously select and attack targets has sparked ethical debates in recent years, with critics warning they would jeopardize international security and herald a third revolution in warfare after gunpowder and the atomic bomb.
A panel of government experts debated policy options regarding lethal autonomous weapons at a meeting of the United Nations Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons in Geneva on Wednesday.
Google, which last year published guiding principles eschewing AI for use in weapons systems, was among seven companies found to be engaging in “best practice” in the analysis that spanned 12 countries, as was Japan’s Softbank, best known for its humanoid Pepper robot.
Twenty-two companies were of “medium concern,” while 21 fell into a “high concern” category, notably Amazon and Microsoft who are both bidding for a $10 billion Pentagon contract to provide the cloud infrastructure for the US military.
Others in the “high concern” group include Palantir, a company with roots in a CIA-backed venture capital organization that was awarded an $800 million contract to develop an AI system “that can help soldiers analyze a combat zone in real time.”
“Autonomous weapons will inevitably become scalable weapons of mass destruction, because if the human is not in the loop, then a single person can launch a million weapons or a hundred million weapons,” Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley told AFP on Wednesday.
“The fact is that autonomous weapons are going to be developed by corporations, and in terms of a campaign to prevent autonomous weapons from becoming widespread, they can play a very big role,” he added.
The development of AI for military purposes has triggered debates and protest within the industry: last year Google declined to renew a Pentagon contract called Project Maven, which used machine learning to distinguish people and objects in drone videos.
It also dropped out of the running for Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), the cloud contract that Amazon and Microsoft are hoping to bag.
The report noted that Microsoft employees had also voiced their opposition to a US Army contract for an augmented reality headset, HoloLens, that aims at “increasing lethality” on the battlefield.
Autonomous weapons
According to Russell, “anything that’s currently a weapon, people are working on autonomous versions, whether it’s tanks, fighter aircraft, or submarines.”
Israel’s Harpy is an autonomous drone that already exists, “loitering” in a target area and selecting sites to hit.
More worrying still are new categories of autonomous weapons that don’t yet exist — these could include armed mini-drones like those featured in the 2017 short film “Slaughterbots.”
“With that type of weapon, you could send a million of them in a container or cargo aircraft — so they have destructive capacity of a nuclear bomb but leave all the buildings behind,” said Russell.
Using facial recognition technology, the drones could “wipe out one ethnic group or one gender, or using social media information you could wipe out all people with a political view.”
The European Union in April published guidelines for how companies and governments should develop AI, including the need for human oversight, working toward societal and environmental wellbeing in a non-discriminatory way, and respecting privacy.
Russell argued it was essential to take the next step in the form of an international ban on lethal AI, that could be summarized as “machines that can decide to kill humans shall not be developed, deployed, or used.”
Amazon, Microsoft, ‘putting world at risk of killer AI’: study
Amazon, Microsoft, ‘putting world at risk of killer AI’: study
- The use of AI to allow weapon systems to autonomously select and attack targets has sparked ethical debates in recent years
- Amazon and Microsoft are both bidding for a $10 billion Pentagon contract to provide the cloud infrastructure for the US military
US and Mideast countries seek Kyiv's drone expertise as Russia-Ukraine talks put on ice
KYIV, Ukraine: The United States and its allies in the Middle East are seeking Ukraine's expertise in countering Iran's Shahed drones, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Various countries, including the United States, have approached Ukraine for help in defending against the Iranian drones, Zelenskyy said late Wednesday. He said he has spoken in recent days with the leaders of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain, Jordan and Kuwait about possible cooperation.
Russia has fired tens of thousands of Shaheds at Ukraine since it invaded its neighbor just over four years ago, launching a swarm of more than 800 drones and decoys in its biggest nighttime barrage. Iran has responded to joint U.S.-Israeli strikes by launching the same type of drones at countries in the Middle East.
Ukrainian assistance in countering Iranian drones will be provided only if it does not weaken Ukraine's own defenses, and if it adds leverage to Kyiv's diplomatic efforts to stop the Russian invasion, according to the Ukrainian leader.
"We help to defend from war those who help us, Ukraine, bring a just end to the war" with Russia, Zelenskyy said. Later Thursday, Zelenskyy said he had received a U.S. request for support to defend against the drones in the Middle East and had given the order for equipment to be provided along with Ukrainian experts without providing further details.
"Ukraine helps partners who help our security and the protection of our people's lives," he added in a social media post.
Trump, in an interview Thursday with Reuters, said, "Certainly I'll take, you know, any assistance from any country."
Ukraine has battle-tested drone defenses
Ukraine has pioneered the development of cut-price drone killers that cost as little as $1,000, rewriting the air defense rule book and making other countries take notice.
European countries got a wake-up call last September on the changed nature of air defense when Poland scrambled multimillion-dollar military assets, including F-35 and F-16 fighter jets and Black Hawk helicopters, in response to airspace violations by cheap drones.
Ukrainian manufacturers have developed low-cost interceptor drones specifically designed to hunt and destroy Shaheds, and its rapidly expanding drone industry is producing excess capacity.
Zelenskyy announced earlier this year that Ukraine would begin exporting the battle-tested systems.
The European Union's top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, said before chairing a meeting of EU and Gulf foreign ministers via video link Thursday that the talks would look at how Ukraine's experience can help countries counter Iranian drones.
Middle East war delays Russia-Ukraine talks
The Iran war, now in its sixth day, has drawn international attention away from Europe's biggest conflict since World War II, and forced the postponement of a new round of U. S-brokered talks between Russia and Ukraine planned for this week, Zelenskyy said.
Western governments and analysts say the Russia-Ukraine war has killed hundreds of thousands of people, while there is no sign that yearlong U.S.-led peace efforts will stop the fighting any time soon.
"Right now, because of the situation around Iran, there are not yet the necessary signals for a trilateral meeting," Zelenskyy said. "But as soon as the security situation and the overall political context allow us to resume that trilateral diplomatic work, it will be done."
Zelenskyy thanked the United States for the return from Russia on Thursday of 200 Ukrainian prisoners of war. Russia's Defense Ministry also said it received the same number of prisoners from Ukraine and thanked the U.S. and United Arab Emirates for mediating.
Prisoner swaps have been one of the few tangible results of the talks. Vladimir Medinsky, a Russian negotiator, said on social media that a total of 500 prisoners from each side would be exchanged between Thursday and Friday.
Oleksandr Merezhko, the head of Ukraine's parliamentary foreign affairs committee, said Russian President Vladimir Putin is trying to drag out the negotiations so that he can press on with Russia's invasion while escaping further U.S. sanctions.
He urged the U.S. administration to look at the Russia-Ukraine war and the war in the Middle East as linked.
"In reality, Russia and Iran are close allies that act in concert — Iran supplies weapons and Russia helps Iran develop its defense industry. These are interconnected conflicts," Merezhko told The Associated Press.
Ukraine's army has recently pushed back Russian forces at some points along the roughly 1,250-kilometer (750-mile) front line, according to the Institute for the Study of War.
Localized Ukrainian counterattacks liberated more territory than Ukrainian forces lost in the last two weeks of February, the Washington-based think tank said this week, estimating the recovered land at about 257 square kilometers (100 square miles) since Jan. 1.
