The original is here: https://www.no-to-nato.org/2021/02/nar-robotar-bestammer-over-liv-och-dod/ and here: https://tidningensyre.se/2021/21-februari-2021/nar-robotar-bestammer-over-liv-och-dod/

Published February 20, 2021

When robots decide on life and death

Autonomous weapon systems can make killing both more convenient and cheaper. Now the world may face a new arms race and an international ban is urgent, according to the peace movement. But the Swedish government’s line is a question mark.

By Olof KlugmanFler artiklar av skribenten

They are dressed in black in the desert heat at Creech air force base, one of the US command centers for armed drones. In their hands are the small coffins marked with Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia and Yemen – countries where American drones have extinguished several lives.

Ann Wright is one of those who wants to remind the employees at the facility about the consequences of their actions thousands of miles away. For three decades she has served the US government as a military officer and diplomat. When she this Friday in March 2015 is among those who are not satisfied with the quiet demonstration but decide to block the traffic at the command center, the police intervene, arrest hre and take her to jail in Las Vegas.

Ann Wright dedicates her time to the peace movement, after the invasion of Iraq in 2003 became the last straw and she resigned from the Foreign Ministry. She has not regretted the decision.

– “My voice is more powerful outside the state apparatus than inside,” says Ann Wright from her home in Hawaii.

Autonomous weapons are soon here

Drones are her specialty. Not the clever machines who fly blood to the sick in hard-to-reach places in Rwanda or find people who have disappeared in the Swedish forest. The drones Ann Wright is interested in do not save lives, they drop bombs and fire missiles thousands of miles from the command centers they are controlled from (thousands of miles away).

– It becomes easier (for the public) to put up with the war when your own young men and women sit in an air-conditioned room and look at a computer screen, she says.

Maybe that’s just the beginning. The drones and other unmanned weapon systems that are already a very tangible reality require a person to press the button for the weapons to be fired. But soon the completely autonomous weapons can be here, those that are pre-programmed to both identify targets and neutralize them. Or to put it bluntly: the weapons that themselves decide who will die and who will live.

Fully autonomous weapons can be drones that make their own decisions about firing missiles and dropping bombs, but also about, for example, submarines or armored vehicles. In short, any type of weapon can become autonomous.  With completely autonomous weapons, or killer robots as they are also called, the thresholds are lowered further to embark on military adventures. This will increase the world’s conflicts, fears Daan Kayser, who works for the Dutch peace organization Pax and the international campaign Stop killer robots, stop the killer robots.

Daan Kayser also warns of a spiraling arms race in which the United States and China in particular are inciting each other to spend ever-increasing sums to stay at the forefront of the development of autonomous weapons systems.

“Concerned about developing the weapons as quickly as possible, they might not think so much about the consequences,” he says.

Contributes to an unstable world

Daan Kayser’s bleak future scenario does not end there. The difficulty of determining who is behind an attack contributes to a more unstable world that is more difficult to see. In addition, the technology is cheap to copy once it is in place and can be spread to both smaller countries and terrorist groups. Thus, the world political game plan can change fundamentally, with increased tensions as a result, according to Daan Kayser. This does not mean that he longs for the time when the United States was the sole superpower.

It would be best if all countries were equal in terms of military and political power so that they could balance each other out. The problem is that the development of autonomous weapons can lead to very rapid shifts in the balance of power, says Daan Kayser.

Even today’s armed drones, which are now spreading to more and more countries, are upsetting the balance of power more than old great powers want to feel, according to Ann Wright. She sees the US attack on Qasem Soleimani, the leader of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, a year ago as an illustrative example. Iran’s retaliation is coming, she is convinced.

– Our political leaders seem to think that we are alone in technology, why else would we kill Qasem Soleimani? One cannot execute Iran’s most popular military and expect them not to respond with the same manner. They also have drones and they have weapons, says Ann Wright.

The development of drones increased during the days of George Bush the Younger in the White House, in the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. It is said that the new weapons were accurate and would reduce the number of casualties. Ann Wright notes that this is not what happened with the drones. The drones’ missiles and bombs have often struck blindly.

– We have seen the whole wedding party and the funeral procession fly in the air and then the medical staff who come to save them, she says.

In the discussion of completely autonomous weapons, the argument recur that civilians can be spared with the help of technology that hits right. But Daan Kayser points out that technology depends on the data we provide it with – information from a prejudiced world dominated by Western white men.

Prejudiced AI

There are many examples of how people’s prejudices and narrow perspectives spread to technology: Automatic soap pumps in public toilets that only react to light hands. African Americans arrested for camera incorrectly recognizing them as criminals. Photo-apps that only take pictures of people with a certain type of eye shape. The algorithms have been trained mainly on white people and simply make more misjudgments when it comes to non-white people.

There are many examples of how people’s prejudices and narrow perspectives spread to technology: Automatic soap pumps in public toilets that only react to light hands. African Americans arrested for camera incorrectly recognizing them as criminals. Photo-apps that only take pictures of people with a certain type of eye shape. The algorithms have been trained mainly on white people and simply make more misjudgments when it comes to non-white people.

– Add a weapon to the equation and it will be very problematic, says Daan Kayser.

It is not just the peace movement that fears completely autonomous weapons. In 2018, the Swedish expert on artificial intelligence (AI) promised Max Tegmark not to participate in the development of completely autonomous weapons. He brought with him a large number of colleagues on a call where they both argue that it is morally questionable to let machines determine people’s lives and deaths and warns of what powerful tools for violence and oppression autonomous weapons can entail, especially when they are linked to monitoring system. Max Tegmark is one of those who fear that in the future, autonomous weapons systems can be used to carry out ethnic cleansing.

Talks are now underway in the UN within the CCW, the convention on particularly inhumane weapons. To move forward there, consensus is required. If one fails to achieve this in 2021, which seems to be the most likely, Daan Kayser believes that the countries that want to move forward on their own.

– It is urgent to get an agreement in place. Otherwise, we risk ending up in a situation where development is out of control and we wish we had introduced regulations, he says.

Robots guard the border

Killer robots may sound like something in a dystopian Hollywood movie. But the fact is that South Korea is already guarding the border with North Korea with robots that could kill any intruders on their own, but which are equipped with a “lock” which means that a human must approve that shots are fired. And just over a year ago, Turkey claimed that they would soon have fully autonomous drones ready to fight in Syria. The statement was met with doubt from experts, but can still be seen as a reminder that the development is ongoing.

The United States and Russia have expressed skepticism about an international ban. Together with China, they are believed to be at the forefront of the development of autonomous weapons. But Daan Kayser does not think one should stare blindly at bringing with them reluctant great powers.

– I hear people say that it is pointless if Russia and the United States are not involved, but we have seen when it comes to the agreements that ban cluster munitions and landmines that it creates norms that have had an effect on them as well, even though they have not signed, he says .

“The government is passive”

He believes that an agreement would have an effect because countries are more concerned than one might think about their international reputation, but also because it would make financial institutions less eager to invest in technology.

The Swedish government’s actions do not impress Daan Kayser. In last year’s foreign declaration, the government stated that Sweden should push for an “effective international ban”. But when a dozen countries, including Germany, Austria and Brazil, came together and described how they want a regulatory framework to be designed, Sweden has not been involved.

Three out of four Swedes oppose the development of weapons that themselves select and attack targets without human intervention, according to a recent opinion poll, commissioned by Stop killer robots. That should motivate the Swedish government to step forward, Daan Kayser believes.

– Sweden is one of the countries where the resistance to killer robots is strongest. It is a strong signal to the Swedish government to be more ambitious, he says.

Gabriella Irsten, political administrator at the International Women’s Union for Peace and Freedom (IKFF), agrees that the Swedish government is passive.

– They say that Sweden should be a leader, but do nothing really, she says.

Gabriella Irsten believes that the feminist foreign policy that is to guide Sweden’s positions should be able to be used to push for a ban. Among other things, she points to fears that autonomous weapons systems could be used to facilitate systematic sexual violence in conflicts, for example by bringing together women and girls.

– Sweden should be able to handle this issue. The tools are there, she says.

Linde does not want to be interviewed

Finding out what Sweden’s attitude really is is not easy. Foreign Minister Ann Linde (S) does not want to appear for an interview and when Syre wrote about the issue in October, the Foreign Ministry’s press service sent an answer describing two reservations to ultimately support an international ban: Firstly, it must be clear which weapons are to be covered , and the countries capable of developing the technology must be covered.

In the autumn, Syre published the Foreign Ministry’s response in its entirety – yet one of the Foreign Minister’s employees called Syre’s reporter and asked for a supplement to the article afterwards, emphasizing that they saw risks with autonomous weapons, but without withdrawing the two reservations.

The Foreign Ministry’s response made the Green Party’s foreign policy spokesperson Janine Alm Ericson go to the roof. She believes that there are no reservations about Swedish support for an international ban, according to the agreement between the government parties. When she then asked Ann Linde about the matter in the Riksdag, the Foreign Minister formulated himself differently:

– We want an effective ban to cover as many people as possible, of course also the countries that are trying to develop weapons. However, this does not necessarily mean that they actively support the design of the ban, said Ann Linde.

International law is based on the fact that agreements are binding on the countries that sign and ratify them. What Sweden’s line will be if, for example, the United States and Russia stand outside, Syre will not receive an answer. In an email, the Foreign Ministry’s press service refers to the fact that there is no ready-made proposal. “But Sweden’s entrance is clear – we are now taking a leading role in the work to find ways forward to effectively ban deadly autonomous weapon systems,” writes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The Swedish defense giant Saab does not want to talk to Syre either. In October, the company wrote to Syre that it should “keep up” with the development towards automation, but if in the future it can also involve the production of completely autonomous weapons, we will not get a clear answer.

Backs from the interview

“AI creates better opportunities for systems to make correct decisions, but it is important to emphasize that decision-making cannot be transferred to robots, it is basically always done by a human being,” writes Saab’s press secretary Mattias Rådström in an email.

When the Swedish Commander-in-Chief (ÖB) Micael Bydén spoke about unmanned systems and artificial intelligence at the conference People and Defense in January, one could sense the power behind the words, despite the corona-safe digital distance.

– We must stay at the forefront, said Micael Bydén.

But we will not know more about the development that the Armed Forces is facing either. Oxygen is first promised an interview with the head of research. But after the questions have been sent in advance, the offer is withdrawn.

The Liberals’ defense policy spokesman Allan Widman does not make the wave after ÖB’s speech. He believes that investments in autonomous weapons are in the interest of industry rather than defense. He has no major moral concerns about the development of autonomous weapons – but he warns of the costs that could displace the new soldiers, tanks and cannons he wants to see.

“We must understand that no matter how much we invest in research and innovation, we will never be able to compete with countries around the United States, China and Russia,” he says.

Allan Widman believes that an excessive technological craze has characterized the Swedish defense in recent decades. He sees the upgrade of the Jas Gripen aircraft as an illustrative example.

– You have to redo everything. It will be a new engine, new hull and new sensors. These are huge leaps that often lead to delays and thus more expensive ones. The industry with its thousands of engineers is naturally happy to see investments in technology development, but I am more interested in having an army of a decent size, says Allan Widman.

The industry is pushing on

In Hawaii, Ann Wright sits and discusses what is driving the development towards autonomous weapons: Industry, rather than the military, she also believes. She perceives a skepticism within the military against letting go of control and letting the computers order themselves.

– There will no longer be use for all these generals when computer number one is a four-star general and computer number two a three-star general, she says, only half jokingly.