In the recent past, NASA has been doing excellent and outstanding things in the outer space. The media has hyped the show and depicted NASA as a genius (Frederick). Most people says the operations of NASA are exhilarating, but on my side, I am left flabbergasted! Could the skills used to put a man on the moon duplicated to improve the state of the life of humans? Can’t they decide to invent robots that will play an essential role to curb the rising insecurities? NASA commitments and objectives just boil my blood. Personally, I am not moved by NASA creativity and innovation because I want to see better things from them. I imply that the government can support NASA to land a man on the moon, however, we can’t make a deadly robot police that will protect people from theft, terrorism, drug trafficking, or any other illegal activities. What type of concerns are we putting ahead in such a nation?
Lately, newspapers articles have been talking about the problem of truancy among high school students. This has affected their academic performance because teachers and parents are yet to find the best solution to this problem. Nonetheless, I obtained information in the New York Times Newspaper that the United States government has an expenditure of at least $40 billion on to cater for outer-space observation satellites. If you could read my mind, I am left wondering why the government preferred not to use some of the resources allocated for the surveillance satellites to construct an extensive laser guns in the geocentric orbit in the most affected schools to monitor the progress of school children. Such an idea looks amazing, but nothing has been done to implement it.
And for just a minute fraction of NASA’s expenditure on space, I feel that I could have been guaranteed a radio-wave-monitored stun firearm that would prevent intruders from trespassing in my farm and home. In the past, I have been having problems with thieves who interferes with my belongings without my permission. It is grotesquely palpable that the government is unwilling to provide funds that will be used to create an extreme energetic force platform to protect Americans. Instead of finding is there is life in the outer space, they could have used these resources to build a killer robot police that would improve the security of all citizens without hesitation.
There is no way the activities in the outer space is going to prevent burglars from breaking into other people’s properties. With a killer robot police, bandits could have stopped their insane habits for the fear of their life. The satirical site, the Onion, in a 1997 editorial articulated the need to make a killer robot police, at least “to keep the cars from roaring down my street at 45 miles per hour” and goes ahead to ask, “What kind of priorities do we have in this country?” (Frederick).
Maybe the government need to strategies its objectives and give priority to the most important things. I think! The resources and time allocated for space exploration are enormous, and this has popularized the phrase, “if we can put a man on the moon, why can’t we.” (ibid). This illustrates that American’s are not contented by the motives of the government as it appears that they are spending too much time focusing on non-issues.
Moreover, Jenkins provides a thoughtful analysis of whether launching destructive robots would pose to be discriminative or not. From the article, “The Ethics of Killer Robots” Jenkins argues that killer robots will introduce a recent form of kind of conflict, “one where our enemies are totally helpless to fight back, where our actions more closely resemble ‘pest control’ than war” (Jenkins). He goes ahead to posit that killer robot would make war too easy for us.
The technology would increase the occurrence of war to take place. These autonomous weapons are dangerous and should be handled with utmost care. Even though the creation of a killer police robot may have clear advantages, there are a lot of moral concerns that should be put into consideration. Is there need to automate killing? Will the killer robots improve security? Obviously, an extensive research must be done to determine if creating the killer police robot would be viable.
In a nutshell, the article, "Peter Asaro vs. the Killer Robots" offers a thoughtful analysis of ethical concerns of creating the killer robots. Arthur (4) claims “you have a responsibility as a military commander to make a decision on what to target and that is a complicated decision” The author wonders whether the robots will be capable of analyzing situations and making responsible decisions. For example, if the attack is taking place near an institution of learning, the robotic machine is expected to make a decision of protecting the students despite the ongoing attack. It is obvious that a killer robot police lacks the ability to make decisions on its own. As a result, it might go ahead attacking the enemy and at the same time killing the students. We are far from creating systems that will make responsible and accurate decisions. It appears like morality will be compromised if we allow machines to replace human soldiers.
Autonomous weapons such as the robots offer precise benefits while concurrently raising sound, but slightly vague, ethical concerns. For instance, majority of the people find it apparent that unbalanced war is unfair, or that the military forces have to obey their enemies. Furthermore, we may eventually have to consider how to assess these ambiguous just worries against the existing assurance of upgrading the results of warfare based on prosperous missions and discernment.
Work Cited
Arthur, Kate. "Peter Asaro Vs. the Killer Robots." Illinois Wesleyan University Magazine 24.2 (2015): 2.
Frederick, Irene. "We Can Put A Man On The Moon, But We Can't Make Killer Robot Police?" The Onion - America's Finest News Source. N.p., 26 Aug. 1997. Web. 20 Apr. 2016.
Jenkins, Ryan. "The Ethics of Killer Robots."
http://www.e-ir.info/2014/07/23/the-ethics-of-killer-robots/
