- Boston Dynamics is one of five robotics companies that have pledged not to weaponise their products.
- The pledges come as fears grow about robots being used by military and law enforcement.
- The company noted in a statement that weaponised robots, “raise new risks of harm and serious ethical issues.”
As we see more companies invest in the creation of robots, there are growing fears that these products could be used for more nefarious applications.
In the past we have seen the robots from Boston Dynamics and its Spot offering in particular, be used by the New York Police Department on patrols, as well as defence companies retrofitting weaponry for potential military applications.
It certainly is a scary thought, which is why Boston Dynamics and four other robotics companies have pledged to not weaponise their creations.
“We pledge that we will not weaponize our advanced-mobility general-purpose robots or the software we develop that enables advanced robotics and we will not support others to do so. When possible, we will carefully review our customers’ intended applications to avoid potential weaponization,” noted Boston Dynamics in a statement, which was co-signed by Agility Robotics, Clearpath Robotics, Open Robotics, Unitree and ANYbotics.
“We believe that adding weapons to robots that are remotely or autonomously operated, widely available to the public, and capable of navigating to previously inaccessible locations where people live and work, raises new risks of harm and serious ethical issues,” the group added.
While we share the robotics companies’ concerns, and commend them for making such a pledge, we still do question whether or not third-parties or indeed anyone who purchases one of these robots cannot simply do with it as they please.
As The Verge points out, there are a few notable omissions from the pledge, such as Ghost Robotics, which specialises in quadrupedal robots and has recently been prioritising sales to militaries and governments.
We hope that more companies take this pledge, but without some sort of regulation or legislation in place, it seems like warfare aided by the use of robots is just around the corner.
One only needs to think about the use of flying attack drones to see how quickly autonomous or remote warfare has taken off.
