You armed conflicts with so-called “killer robots” on the battlefronts are closer to becoming a reality because of the war in Ukraine, considered experts interviewed by The Telegraph. But artificial intelligence technology is not yet developed enough for this to happen in the near future.
“I would say that we’re on the cusp of some pretty fundamental changessaid Ken Payne, an expert in strategic studies and international relations at King’s College London. But the war in Ukraine continues to follow “more traditional lines,” “with some high-tech elements, particularly in drone technology, but not yet in artificial intelligence technology.”
How high-end drones attack Ukraine and have become a symbol of resistance
Kristian Gustafsson, from the department of intelligence and security studies at Brunel University, reminded the same newspaper that “War is a great accelerator of technological development, it has always been“. But it’s still a long way from having a “T-1000 Terminator,” a reference to the cyborg from director James Cameron’s film, on the ground.
At the moment, it is no longer just missiles and cluster bombs that make up the military arsenal of the Russian and Ukrainian military forces. In the last three months, both countries used drones in air strikes to drop grenades at positions controlled by enemy forces. While Russia more commonly uses domestically made drones, Ukraine is using drones purchased even before the war with Turkey.
Is a battlefront where the conflict is waged remotely and almost without human intervention. The drones — remotely controlled or autonomous — fly over places with an enemy presence and transmit the images captured with a camera to the headquarters. That’s where the soldiers decide what to do next: head to other stops, crash to set off explosives, or throw weapons, like a grenade.
In a video of a Russian attack in May, a Suicide drone type KUB-BLA with a 1 kg explosive charge crashed a few meters from an M777 cannon who had been transported by a convoy led by the Ukrainian army. Ukraine follows the same strategy: Selcuk Bayraktar, CEO of Baykar, a Turkish company that sold arms to the country, confirmed that the TB2 drones “are doing what they should”.
But none of these weapons is completely autonomous, as the “killer robots” promise to be. that artificial intelligence can create. If they are, that raises an ethical question, stresses Justin Bronk, airpower and technology researcher at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI): “Artificial intelligence says, ‘If you do this attack, a lot of your [soldados] he will die, but in the end there will be fewer casualties’”, exemplified the expert: “If you follow this advice, are you responsible for the deaths caused directly by your actions?”.
Source: Observadora
