Peter Singer on military robots.
“This is a booming new industry, and it’s not just an American industry,” he said. “There are 43 countries working on military robots right now. They’re countries like Britain, Israel — Israel’s very big into military robotics — China, Russia, Iran and Pakistan. … We actually shot down an Iranian drone — an Iranian unmanned plane — over Iraq a few weeks ago.”
He’s an ethicist, so he only gets to write about it if he looks at the ethical angle.
“What happens if the robotic drone kills the wrong person?” he said. “It’s not just something sci-fi anymore. On three separate occasions, we thought we got Osama Bin Laden with a predator drone strike and we didn’t. We killed the wrong person. In one situation, it was an Afghan civilian who happened to be unlucky enough to look like Bin Laden.
I can’t get excited about this “new” ethical quandary, which is basically just a variant on the ancient problem of the cost of war in human life.
I think he just wanted to write about military robots, and needed an excuse.