One
indication that modern technological society could be viewed as trying to move
in a more civilized direction is in the gradual introduction of fighting robots
to do our recreational fighting for us.
In an article in Live Science “Giant ‘Battle Bot’ Could Get
Makeover Ahead of Epic Duel”, we learn that MegaBots, Inc., a company based in
Boston that focuses on building fighting robots, just started a Kickstarter
campaign to raise the funds to build a new improved robot that would fight its
counterpart from a Japanese company. Now
we no longer have to live with the side effects of our favorite recreational
fighter getting a broken nose, a concussion or a busted rib cage. A robot is built of parts that are assembled
into a machine entity. Damage or destroy
some of the parts in a fight, and they can be replaced. It is much easier to replace a machine part
than it is an organic part. Hippies can
proclaim a new mantra: “Let the robots
make war and we’ll make love.”
But
the question is if fighting robots can truly replace human fighters in terms of
the psychological needs of human spectators.
After all, robots don’t have any skin in the game, both literally and
figuratively. A robot does not have the
kind of coherent organic self that allows itself to experience a threat to its
very existence the way a human would. A
fighting robot is programmed to attack and to defend itself, but its fighting
is based on programming rather than on an awareness of an existential threat to
its mortality. A robot does not have
reflexive awareness; it does not have flowing continual consciousness. It does not experience fear that it is going
to get hurt or that it is going to die.
A
robot does not experience a rush of adrenaline, as it goes from a calmer state
living a daily routine life to a survival mode.
A fighting robot goes from an off mode to activation for the only thing
for which it exists. Now granted the
program is sophisticated enough that the robot has to operate independent of
the ongoing control and manipulation by a human. It certainly operates more independently than
a drone that is guided to a target and that fires missiles at it. But the Battle Bot is still different enough
from a human, that it would generate little real strong identification from a normal
human. Unless, of course, the human has
become so robotized from all the mirroring and modeling it has experienced from
computers, complex machines, and other robots.
So here is a frightening truth about these spectator conflicts between
fighting robots. Their popularity is
based on the fact that human spectators have become sufficiently robotized that
they can identify with robots. They can obtain vicarious satisfaction out of
seeing their robot damage and destroy another robot as if something apart from
a complex piece of machinery was being affected.
Traditionally
combat was a meaningful way for men to leave organic imprints, even though
negative and destructive, on their field of experience. The spectator, in identifying with a
victorious combatant, would participate on a collective level in the organic
imprint being left in the victory. The
victory would be part of the collective memory of all the observers of the
combat, and all the people who heard the news from the observers. If a robot’s victory over another robot can
generate a similar kind of impact over some people, then for those people, the
boundaries between human and robot have truly been dramatically blurred.
Fighting
robots have been and are being considered for actual warfare, and this raises a
whole new bundle of concerns. Are the
rules of warfare going to be changed such that robots will fight robots in
order to resolve disputes, and whichever army of robots wins the war will
determine which military group gets its way.
This is dreaming. Robots are
increasingly going to be an instrument and a weapon to fight human
combatants. In other words, we are
increasingly going to have complex machines that are going to be able to choose
targets on their own. This is, of course,
very different from a drone, which is constantly being guided by human operators.
Were
we to see robots battling against other robots, we would perceive a situation
of conflict in which no organic imprints are being left and in which no hurt or
pain to organisms is actually being experienced or perceived. We would see a situation in which no humans
are being injured or hurt, in which no humans are being put in pain or
discomfort. If this situation does
exist, there would simultaneously be no satisfaction of having made and
preserved significant organic imprints by causing pain and death to enemies,
and at the same time, no recognition of the enormity of war and therefore no
experiences to cause a country or militant group to reconsider the next time it
considers getting into war. In other
words, war without participation of humans is less costly to humans, and
therefore, is less likely to provide meaningful resolution and closure.
Robotic
warfare that is directed at humans obviously creates pain, injury and death for
the human victims. However, whatever
organic imprints that exist in the situation are attenuated. One could say that the person or persons who
activate fighting robots are creating some sort of imprint by setting the
robots in motion. But a true organic
imprint in fighting involves a mixture of defined discrete motion – involved
with the overall direction of the aggressive actions to subdue the enemy – and
flowing blendable continual motion – the constantly adjusted moves that have to
be made to deal with the shifting target of the enemy. In fighting between humans, human aggressors
are involved in the use and experience of both of these kinds of motion. As a result, they are leaving and receiving
organic imprints.
When
one pushes a button to activate a fighting robot, one is simply giving off one
defined discrete stimulus. This is a
highly attenuated organic imprint.
Granted that there is the organic imprint of creating one general plan
of attack, but this is more attenuated, because the planner is not directly
connected not only with the immediate experience of fighting, but even in the
immediate experience that comes from planning battles where his human soldiers’
lives are at risk.
It is
only by leaving the negative organic imprint that comes from participating with
human agents in warfare, that one can truly feel one’s participation in events
that lead to human pain, suffering and misery.
Pushing buttons for fighting robots, leads to a much more attenuated
chain of responsibility. Pushing buttons
for fighting robots is ultimately a numbing experience that doesn’t allow a
person to fully experience the intensity of the negative organic imprints that
come from killing in war and, therefore, does not convince people as easily of
the horrors of war. Without organic imprints
through a more immediate participation, the button-pushers cannot as easily
learn the lesson of just how horrible war is.
So
the increasing use of robots in warfare may protect humans from taking on the
more active role of combatants, but without that role, there will be less
incentive to turn away from the destruction of warfare as a vehicle for
resolving conflicts and disputes.
Paradoxically, the use of fighting robots in warfare may prolong wars
and lead to more destruction, as the button-pushers blur with the robots they
activate to become mechanical conflict generators, to become, in a way,
fighting robots themselves.
(c) 2015 Laurence Mesirow
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