LONDON—An Israeli drone manufacturer has said Britain and other Western governments are reluctant to use autonomous weapons—powered by artificial intelligence (AI)—even though “the technology is there.”
Uri Shenfeld, chief marketing officer with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), was speaking at the giant DSEI defence and security equipment exhibition at the ExCel in London, which concluded on Friday.
‘Kamikaze Drone’
In June, IAI announced it had reached an agreement to sell the Rotem—which is sometimes described as a “kamikaze drone”—to three unnamed NATO countries, shortly after agreeing a separate deal with Estonia.But Mr. Shenfeld told The Epoch Times: “Many countries in the West want control of the munition. They want a ’significant man in the room'. The customers don’t yet want autonomous weapons, often for regulatory reasons.”
He said the first loitering missile—the Harpy—was designed by IAI 40 years ago and was designed to take out air defences.
Mr. Shenfeld said there have been huge technological advances since then and weapons controlled by AI were no longer a matter of science fiction.
West Wants ‘Meaningful Man in the Loop’
But Mr. Shenfeld said all the major Western powers currently agreed that drones, robotic tanks and other equipment which could be operated without a human physically present still had to have a “meaningful man in the loop.”He said in the past missiles were “fire and forget,” meaning that once the trigger was pulled there was no way of stopping them from hitting their target.
But he said, “With our loitering missiles you can abort the mission right up to the second of impact.”
IAI’s drones and loitering missiles have a camera on their noses and are operated by men and women safely back in a control room who can abort the mission at the last minute if they spot “uninvolved persons” within the vicinity of the target.
Mr. Shenfeld said he was sure the West’s adversaries, in particular Russia and China, were working on autonomous weapons and he said there was a danger of being left behind by our opponents.
But Lieutenant General Tom Copinger-Symes, the deputy commander of the UK Strategic Command, told the same committee autonomous weapons could only be used if the human personnel in the armed forces had confidence in them.
He said: “If you don’t, your soldiers, sailors and aviators won’t trust that bit of kit and they won’t use that bit of kit, which is one of the reasons we take it so seriously. But above all, they won’t sleep at night, if they don’t know that bit of kit is really achieving what we need safely and responsibly.”
Mr. Cohen said, “There is a particular risk ... which is that it could kill everyone.”
