LOOKING BACK: FLEETDRIVE ISSUE 6
FLEETDRIVE
KILLER
ROBOTS
Sci-fi blockbusters allow our imaginations to run wild, but what
happens when technology does too? Are we automating our
own demise? Let’s find out…
SCOTT MURRAY
AUSTRALASIAN FLEET MANAGEMENT ASSOCIATION
P
rofessor Toby Walsh is a mastermind
on the artificial one. Fresh from a stint in
Geneva, Switzerland, he spoke to a very
important room of very important people on the
issue of autonomous weapons and the dangers
of humans attacking one another on autopilot.
The mission was to summarise concerns
shared widely among the scientific, robotics and
engineering communities that the developing
arms race is not a prosperous path to go down.
“I warned that these weapons will destabilise
the world, that they will violate international
humanitarian law (IHL), that any ethical
safeguards put in place will be hacked and over-
ruled by less principled actors,” Walsh said.
So why do we need to be so wary of how
we currently adopt and become intrinsically
comfortable with technology? Walsh says it’s
not strictly the weapons themselves, especially
when in the right hands.
“They will fall into the hands of terrorists and
rogue nations who have no qualms using them
against civilian populations,” he warns. “It
won’t be simply robots fighting robots, it’ll be
robots against civilians, robots that fight 24/7,
take no prisoners, and obey orders regardless
of how evil they may be.”
Fleet management has a role to play in this,
because transport is one area where the changes
are going to be felt soon according to Walsh.
ISSUE 20 2019 / WWW.AFMA.ORG.AU
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