‘What Happens Next?’: Will Tomorrow’s Wars Be Fought by Robots?
It’s an unfortunate truth that many of our technological advancements are driven by conflict. In war, the party with the most advanced technology has a significant advantage, and a vast military industrial complex is hard at work developing the latest and the greatest to give their side a leg up. From the internet, to satellites, to robotics, one thing war certainly is good for is advancing technology.
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Artificial intelligence and autonomous systems are poised to change the battlefield, and with it, soldiers themselves.
Today, the human cost of war is high. Will that be true of tomorrow’s wars, or will humans be removed from the front lines, left to orchestrate surgical drone strikes and autonomous technology behind the scenes?
And what about the soldiers themselves? Today, pilots are operating drones from the other side of the world, but they’re still reporting high levels of trauma. Will reducing the humans involved in combat also reduce the humanity that should govern it? Can modern soldiers be both ethical and effective? And how will emerging technologies such as AI and robotics affect human soldiering?
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Monash University’s podcast, What Happens Next?, examines a new topic this week: The future of soldiering. Join host Dr Susan Carland as she talks to veterans and experts in ethics; robotics, autonomous systems, and artificial intelligence; resilience; and military conduct to discover what the future we face looks like if we fail to consider the moral and ethical quandaries presented by new technologies on the battlefield.
This week’s guests are philosophy professor Dr Rob Sparrow; alumnus and veteran Dr Josh Roose; Dr Kate Devitt, Chief Scientist of Trusted Autonomous Systems, CRC; former SAS commanding officer Ben Pronk DSC; and Paul Scharre, a former US Army Ranger and the author of Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War.
“When you have humans with other humans, it's a human endeavour. And when you take humans away from other humans and then put robots between them, then there's a loss of a connection from a human perspective.”Kate Devitt
What Happens Next? will be back next week with part two of this series, “Will AI Change the Future of Soldiering?”.
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