Yesterday's science fiction is now reality—including in Germany's armed forces. Autonomous drones, transport robots and robotic dogs—more and more high tech is being deployed on the battle field.
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00:00 Robots can be friendly, they can entertain, and some can even act as caregivers.
00:10 And then there are the others, so-called killer robots, the kind we've only seen in Hollywood
00:15 movies that destroy and kill without human emotion.
00:20 Killer robots sound like something out of a science fiction movie.
00:25 The problem is that they're turning into reality.
00:27 They're not the Terminator robot, they're not sophisticated robots, they're the sorts
00:31 of drones that we're starting to see turning up on the battlefield in Ukraine.
00:36 And increasingly, it's not humans that are controlling those drones, but it's computers.
00:41 It's a simple technical matter to remove any humans from the control loop and replace them
00:46 by algorithms.
00:47 Tanks, soldiers and trenches.
00:48 That's how it looked in Russia's invasion of Ukraine, until artificial intelligence
00:56 began to be used on both sides, such as with the Bayraktar drones.
01:01 A single one costs over 11 million euros.
01:08 Then the legacy weapon systems of both the Ukrainians and the Russians, that is, those
01:14 systems previously not equipped with AI, were equipped with it.
01:19 And these systems changed the war.
01:22 On the Russian side, for example, there were glide bombs that are equipped with AI.
01:29 On the Ukrainian side, we see the equipment with AI, such as drones, or, and this is key,
01:37 the fact that Ukraine was able to be so effective and successful in the first few months has
01:43 to do with the fact that they had very good situational awareness.
01:48 Military conflicts are all about data and evaluating it.
01:51 Understanding speed is critical.
01:53 AI can achieve this and make tactical decisions.
01:59 With highly automated systems, we have to think carefully about how we organize the
02:03 division of labor between human and machine.
02:07 People have intentions, machines do not have intentions.
02:11 And we use these machines, these automated systems, as tools.
02:17 Can a drone become a humanoid killer robot, a Terminator?
02:23 A Terminator?
02:26 No, that's not possible.
02:29 We haven't reached that level of technology yet.
02:32 So we do see fascinating YouTube videos from Boston Dynamics, for example.
02:37 We can see that these are machines that have a high level of performance in the area of
02:41 motion control.
02:44 When they do a somersault or things like that, that doesn't make them dangerous killer robots,
02:49 though.
02:50 Last year, military spending worldwide rose to more than 2 trillion euros, a new record.
02:58 The US is in first place with almost 750 billion euros.
03:02 But China is also catching up.
03:05 Russia increased its military budget by around 9% in 2022.
03:12 If you have an army that works with AI, you have different tactics than one that works
03:16 without it.
03:19 That is, it's not about putting artificial intelligence into a weapon system.
03:23 It's about changing the whole system, training, tactics, organization.
03:29 And it could be that smaller countries that are more agile in terms of the composition
03:33 of their military, the cooperation between civil, military and industry, that they suddenly
03:39 have a head start in bringing data together.
03:47 Companies that develop robots for peaceful purposes are also working on autonomous weapon
03:51 systems and receive money from governments to do so.
03:56 Around 60 countries are working on such systems.
04:03 The technologies are going to exist.
04:04 They're going to be part of our lives.
04:05 We're going to have autonomous cars.
04:06 We're going to have autonomous trucks, autonomous buses.
04:09 There's going to be lots of AI in our lives.
04:11 And that technology could be repurposed, turned into autonomous weapons.
04:15 So we can't stop that happening because we want all those positive uses of AI in our
04:19 lives.
04:20 But we can at least stop arms companies openly developing and selling such weapons and making
04:25 them like the Kalashnikovs of today.
04:28 One possible solution?
04:29 Stricter regulations.
04:30 But this is controversial.
04:32 A few EU nations led by France are calling for extensive exemptions for some AI uses
04:37 in the military.
04:38 (electronic music)