[tt] [technoliberation] FW: Good magazine: "Autonomous killing machines"

Tue Sep 11 12:55:19 UTC 2007

----- Forwarded message from "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu> -----

From: "Hughes, James J." <James.Hughes at trincoll.edu>
Date: Tue, 11 Sep 2007 08:15:04 -0400
To: News and views from the IEET <ieet-news at ieet.org>,
	technoliberation at yahoogroups.com
Subject: [technoliberation] FW: Good magazine: "Autonomous killing machines"
Reply-To: technoliberation at yahoogroups.com

    forwarded by Kristi Scott
   [1]http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Provocations/engineering_politi
   cs

Engineering Politics

What killer robots say about the state of social activism.

   Illustrations By [2]Justin Gabbard
   Words By [3]Christopher Csikszentmihalyi

   Among the many changes in U.S. policy after 9/11 was one that went
   unnoticed by everyone except a few geeks: The military quietly
   reversed its longstanding position on the role of robots in
   battlefields, and now embraces the idea of autonomous killing
   machines. There was no outcry from the academics who study
   robotics--indeed, with few exceptions they lined up to help,
   developing new technologies for intelligent navigation, locomotion,
   and coordination. At my own institute, an enormous space is being
   out-fitted to coordinate robotic flying, swimming, and marching units
   in preparation for some future Normandy.
   "Why aren't scientists warning the public about robots?"
   It's not as if we haven't all seen the movies where robots slaughter
   their makers with tireless accuracy. That particular dystopia has been
   well advertised for about 100 years. So why aren't the scientists who
   are involved in this research publicly dissenting, warning the public
   about the dangers of killer robots? It wasn't always such a complacent
   profession.

   In the tumultuous late 1960s, many engineers questioned their own
   roles in producing materials for the Cold War. A forthcoming book by
   the historian Matthew Wisnioski demonstrates that these
   activists-engineers had mixed destinies (some dropped engineering
   altogether for organic farming) but that some successfully pushed
   their institutions to conduct research that didn't center on killing
   humans.

   It's hard to imagine that kind of social and political activism in the
   cubicles of today's military contractors. Indeed, if you've ever
   wondered how technologies like napalm or mustard gas were developed,
   you need look no further than the ethos of contemporary robotics
   research. Engineering is the plain, reliable, and boring cousin to
   science, and has been ignored by progressives who don't think about
   designing technologies that further their goals. That's unfortunate,
   because the work of engineers--nearly everything that you can touch or
   that you use--profoundly affects all of our lives.

   Most engineers would deny that their work is sociopolitical. But the
   fruits of engineering, from the ink in this magazine to your car, are
   nearly always conceived, built, and sold by commercial enterprises to
   consumers, companies, or governments. How is that not social? And
   somehow the ways that resources are allocated and the decisions about
   which of society's requirements deserve a technology aren't thought to
   be political. Progressives have ceded the physical world to "markets"
   and technocratic experts--never a good strategy. Technology has become
   a democracy-free zone.

   How can we reimagine more democratic technologies? To start, change
   must happen from inside the domain. By the time lawyers and
   politicians are involved, design decisions have already been made.
   Progressives need to get involved in research, design, and production.
   Engineering schools are more socially and politically conservative
   than other schools, in addition to being enclaves of a culture that
   loves big guns and fast cars. Students and professors must work to
   reformulate how engineering is conceived and taught, and the canon
   needs to be razed and rebuilt.

   But even the best engineers can't design progressive change if they
   work for a regressive multinational corporation. Luckily, the
   open-source movement offers an alternative model. Open sourcing allows
   individuals across the world to collaborate on, for example,
   developing groundbreaking software--competitive with that of any
   corporation precisely because the completed software is sharable and
   rewriteable. As the open-source movement matures, the number of
   projects with a progressive political bent (or even ones designed for
   direct action) will multiply. Scientists, already experimenting with
   open-source journals, are scheming ways to begin collaboratively
   designing cheaper medicines and healthcare technologies.

   Every product is sold with the promise of making a consumer's life
   easier; we need to understand whether that ease is built on
   disempowering community, family, or the environment. Social dimensions
   need to join the list of considerations that go into the design
   specification of every product. Engineers need to determine whether a
   product abets democracy or totalitarianism, whether it treats its user
   as a worker or as a human being.

   But such changes will only take place if we work to connect models of
   a just society to specific technical directions. And if we find more
   progressives who aren't afraid of a little math.

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References

   1. http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Provocations/engineering_politics
   2. http://www.goodmagazine.com/user/JustinGabbard
   3. http://www.goodmagazine.com/user/ChristopherCsik
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