Wired for War Comes to Cambridge

PW Singer, author of Wired for War, spoke yesterday at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Picking up on his book, Singer spoke to a full lecture hall that seemed evenly split between undergrad, grad, and faculty. He emphasized the fact that development of military robotics -- whether designed for defensive or offensive capabilities -- was outstripping (by far) legal, ethical, and scientific analysis of the impact that such new devices have on human's capacity to make war. Instead, he spoke of scientists and robotic developers who believed that such "non-scientific" concerns were not their concern, or that the developers would be able to maintain control over the robots (rather than policy-makers.)

Singer also spoke of the speed of this change, and the impact it has been having on both young soldiers (who can fly a drone over Pakistan from North Dakota, for instance, without even having a pilot's license) to senior policy-makers (whose understanding of the rate of deployment of such weapons is, at times, woefully behind the curve.)

There was some discussion of a recent New Yorker article about the Predator and Reaper (a more-heavily armed Predator) programs. The article expressed special concern about the drones operated by the CIA, which author Jane Mayer maintains, does not have the same experience or procedural limits on indiscriminate targetting as does the military. Indeed, the UN (through its Committee on Extrajudicial, Summary or Arbitrary Executions) recently demanded that the US make showing that such CIA-operated drones are within the bounds of international law.

Singer was joined on stage by MIT Professor Missy Cummings, a former Navy fighter pilot. Her work is in the field of unmanned flight, and she discussed a few of her ongoing projects(*).

(*) - More to come on this.

Finally, it is clear that in the post-9/11 era, funding for robotics and related projects will be dominated by the Defense Department. From the Navy (like Japan) studying baseball-playing robots to self-driven cars, it clear that military uses (and plain old military research) will drive this field. And as Singer noted, such research funding comes with costs.

A recording of the Forum is expected to posted online shortly at the MIT Technology and Culture site.

Wired for War

"Wired for War", by P.W. Singer, is a far broader book that the title indicates (although the subtitle -- The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century does give some indication.) Rather than limit his inquiry into the the current state of the robotics world, Singer covers the entire gamut of how wars will be fought in the next century.

But he does spend some (first) exploring the current state of the world. He identifies two current robots: PackBot, built by iRobot; and Talon and its "pissed-off big brother" SWORDS (Special Weapons Observation Reconnaissance Detection System) built by Foster-Miller.

Singer considers himself a child of pop culture, and references to film, books, and even video games are littered throughout the text. Some of the references are direct, as when he wonders whether Star War's C-3PO will be the future shape of robots; others are more obscure. But Singer is at his best when he can merge the influence of science fiction -- from Asimov to the original Star Trek; from James Cameron (director of Terminator) to J.K. Rowling (the 'invisability cloak' described in Harry Potter is inspiring scientists today -- to show how culture influences scientists and their expectations of and for robotics.

Singer also wonders and writes about the role that robots will play in the warrior culture. Separation of the warrior from his opponent has long been a theme of technologic advance (after all, even Japanese samurai eventually acknowledged that their swords were no match for a peasant with a gun). But Singer notes that the very fact of "going to war" -- heading off to a distant place where the laws of normal society are suspended -- no longer applies when a Predator drone can be flown over Afghanistan by an operator who can finish his mission and be home in time for dinner.

The book also raises the topic related to robotics: artificial intelligence. As systems become more and more sophisticated, human oversight becomes an temporal impediment to resolving a conflict successfully. In other words, if machines are waiting for human approval of a pre-emptive attack, the opportunity will be lost, and the machine (and perhaps one or more humans) will suffer as the result. But the alternative: humans ceding control to machines without "human fail-safe" is a topic that, as Singer records, is not one very many scientists working in the field wish to discuss.

Singer does a admirable job of identifying issues that the new technology will raise. While he doesn't try to predict outcomes, he also points to a future that will continue to challenge us. The book is well-worth reading for those who are looking to quickly grasp a state of the robotics/AI world, as it applies to war-making. And in a post-9/11 environment, defense budgets and political resistance to casualties means that more, not less, resources will be available for placing machines "in harm's way."