Autonomous weapons

   Autonomous weapons should not be banned, but rather changed to reduce the lethality of them. They robots should be usable without a remote, but only able to function off of direct orders.

   The ramifications of using autonomous weapons is that many national threats can arise. Some countries could declare war on another and cause mass havoc and destruction. The ability to have decision making algorithm only further backs my previous statement. Algorithms are not always fully optimal and can have common mistakes. A huge potential threat would be if the algorithm were to go wrong and the drone were to attack non hostile targets, this would cause an uproar amongst many nations. Not only are they not reliable, but they aren’t practicable without human intervention. The drones will need direct orders, or the potential for harm will be tremendous. 

   On the other hand, the drones could actually save lives for the people using them. Having less troops going on missions to eliminate a certain target via explosives, we could simply use a drone and if it gets destroyed we build a new one. The only problem with this is that after a few hundred drone losses the amount of money used to create all new ones would be very substantial. 

   The most practical way of thinking about this issues is through the pros and cons. You have to decided whether you want to risk the lives of troops or spend a few hundred million dollars to build new drones. Personally, I believe that we should stick with the drones, but make minor changes to them to make them safer for others. As strange as it sounds, a few “safe features” to the drones can make a huge difference. 

   If we were to create a different algorithm that required a person (who could be located anywhere) to confirm that the target of the drone is the correct target to eliminate, then there would be a lesser chance of harm on civilians. The only issue that would go along with this is human error, but human error is already seen with bomb strikes and other warfare mechanics that it should not be such a large problem to the public.

   The real issue with autonomous weapons is not that there could be errors, but rather that people are afraid of the unknown and do not want potential harm. We should keep using autonomous weapons, but make changes to them to make them safer for the user and the civilians located around the battlefield.