In an open letter, six leading robotics firms promised not to add weapons to their general use technology and said they would oppose others doing so.
“We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously operated, widely available to the public and capable of navigating to previously inaccessible locations where people live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues,” read the open letter, first reported by Axios.
“We also call on every organization, developer, researcher and user in the robotics community to make similar pledges not to build, authorize, support, or enable the attachment of weaponry to such robots.”
The letter was signed by Boston Dynamics, Agility Robotics, ANYbotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics and Unitree Robotics.
Co-signers also pledged to review applications to buy their robots to prevent possible weaponization and to investigate technological features that could be weaponized in future.
‘The benefits for humanity of these technologies strongly outweigh the risk of misuse.’
In a statement to Axios, Boston Dynamics said it was concerned about attempts made to weaponize commercially available robots, adding that such developments could further erode public trust in technology.
“For this technology to be broadly accepted throughout society, the public needs to know they can trust it,” the statement said. “And that means we need policy that prohibits bad actors from misusing it.”
In their open letter, the six robotics companies said they were “convinced that the benefits for humanity of these technologies strongly outweigh the risk of misuse, and we are excited about a bright future in which humans and robots work side by side to tackle some of the world’s challenges”.
Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd
This is a pertinent development for three key reasons:
- The focus is on humans and human society which must be weighted above technologies. Trust and acceptance of robots is key for future human-robot interactions.
- Policies and conglomerations have shown motivated ethical directions and can be a good starting point.
- What we do with robots would be related to what robots do to us – thus underscoring a bi-directional behavior between humans and machines.
It paves a safer way toward digital interactions with robots, but only if policies enforce letters. This offcourse does not cover usage in army or police which has already been implemented – and at times for good reasons to reduce loss of human lives.