CRIMINAL ROBOTS AND DRONES
Can robots commit crimes? Killer robots are an erstwhile fodder of science fiction cinema. Films like Terminator have already given us a peek of the apocalyptical world we are quite likely to inherit. Researchers have cautioned that robots and computers will commit more crimes than humans by 2040. Maxim Pozdorovkin in his new documentary, “The Truth About Killer Robots”, delineates all sorts of hazards – economic, psychological, moral, posed to humans by automation and robotics. At the center of his film lies the question: “when a robot kills a human, who takes the blame?”
In March 2018 an experimental Uber vehicle, operating in autonomous mode, struck and killed a pedestrian as she was crossing the street in Tempe, Arizona—the first fatal accident of its kind. Then there is the famous case of a driverless Tesla car on autopilot hitting a truck without decelerating, and another in which the car crashed into the highway median. In both cases the drivers were killed by machines they trusted.
However, the very first case of robotic homicide was reported way back in 1981 in Kawasaki Heavy Industries factory in Japan when an employee working on a robot was scooped up by its hydraulic arm and hauled into a grinding machine where he got crushed to death .
On July 7th 2016, Dallas police used a bomb-disposal robot with an explosive device on its manipulator’s arm to kill a suspect after five police officers were murdered and seven others wounded.
A 136 kg, K5 security robot employed to guard the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto, California, collided into a 16-month-old child and carried on driving leaving him bruised with a swollen foot and sore head. The robot manufactured by Knightscope was meant to be on the lookout for known shoplifters at the shopping centre by patrolling along predetermined routes.
In the USA, in 2001 a car factory employee was killed when he stepped into an unlatched robotic cage to clean it. The robotic arm presuming that the intruder was an auto-component clasped him by the neck and stifled him to death.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration, has reported that in USA alone at least thirty-three deaths have occurred and that the number is inclined to soar as robots leave their cages and begin walking among us.
In 2009, South African National Defence Force, during a live fire training exercise, a computerised Oerlikon MKS twin-barreled anti-aircraft gun, underwent an unexpected software malfunction, causing the weapon to fire in full-auto mode at the rate of 550 rounds per minute while pivoting about crazily in 360-degree circles. At the end it created a blood-splattered scene leaving nine soldiers dead and 14 others grievously injured. According to a Washington Post report, over four hundred military UAVs have accidentally fallen from the sky, domestically and overseas, “smashing into homes, farms, runways, highways etc .
In the hospital, a robot grabbed a patient’s abdominal tissue during a colorectal surgery and declined to release it despite all efforts until the machine was rebooted . In another case, a woman was struck in the face by a surgical robot during her hysterectomy.
Two London-based artists created a bot that purchased random items off the dark web. The bot besides buying fake jeans, a baseball cap with a spy camera, a stash can, some Nikes, 200 cigarettes, a set of fire-brigade master keys, a counterfeit Louis Vuitton bag also bought ten ecstasy pills. Should these artists be liable for purchase and possession of drugs?
What are the means of determining culpability? Who is culpable and liable when a robot or artificial intelligence goes berserk? Actus reus and mens rea are the foundations for criminal law. These two key terms of the law stem from the phrase “Actus non facit reum nisi mens rea”, which literally means “an act does not make a person guilty unless the mind is also guilty”.It’s been taken that a person is guilty if they are proved to be culpable or reprehensible in both thought and action.
When a robot commits a crime how to determine whether it’s the vile act of the robot? Most robot-related incidents until now have been, firstly the result of Machines being too stupid, rather than too smart, or secondly on account of a disharmonious relationship between man and machine. For better worse, AI is poised to change both at this point, we are expecting to attain singularity by 2040, at which time we can expect a significant chunk of crimes to be committed by robots and machines. For robot or machine to commit a crime based on guilty mind, AI technology would have to approach the singularity. A point at which, the machine intelligence equals or surpasses the human mind bringing, harm, risk, fault and punishment into the picture.
Still, if a robot kills someone, then it has transgressed the law (actus reus), but technically it has committed just half a crime, as it would be extremely difficult to establish mens rea.
How would a lawyer go about demonstrating the “guilty mind” of a non-human? And what would “intent” resemble in a machine mind? How would we go about proving an autonomous machine was justified in killing a human in self-defence or the extent of preconceived malice?
Even if we solve these legal issues, we are still left with the question of punishment. What’s a 30-year prison sentence to an autonomous machine that does not become old, grow ill or miss its dear ones? Unless, indeed, it was programmed to “ponder” on its wrongdoing and find a way to rewrite its code.
Gabriel Hallevy, author of “When Robots Kill: Artificial Intelligence under Criminal Law”, has proposed changing penal law to hold autonomous machines liable for crimes, similar to corporations.
Micro-robotics is also advancing rapidly. Robots which are as small as fingernails, equipped with HD cameras and microphone are taking surveillance to a whole new level.
Dragonfly robots, and robo-bumblebees which can fly undetected into buildings, take pictures and even attack terrorists have been uncovered . Micro-multi-robotic systems with swarm capabilities have abilities to achieve incredible things both for armies and criminals.
In 2014 researchers at Harvard University created the biggest robot swarm ever, using 1,024 micro- robots which are no more than a size of a coin. The robots could separate and assemble themselves into various shapes and designs,like a flock of birds or swarm of bees .
It’s scary to have a drone with a gun chasing you from behind, but nothing can be terrifying and deadly than a flock of thirty such robots swooping and hunting down a victim. Just imagine the consequences, if such swarm of robots were to suffer a virus or a hack, the robots could reverse their attack on the host itself instead of the enemy.
Up heretofore, we have seen how the robots deployed by man are committing crimes, robots are also being rampantly deployed as tools to commit crimes in creative ways by criminals and terrorists. The drug cartels in Mexico have started using drones since 2010 to transport drugs.
In Mexico, prior to 2011, virtually all drones owned and operated by cartels were produced abroad; primarily in Israel and China. Mexican syndicates have now become so accustomed to drone use that they are now using Mexican-based companies to build them in cities including the Federal District, Guadalajara, Monterrey, Querétaro and Tijuana.
Mexican success has enticed the Colombian drug cartels to use drones as well motivating them to test the same method in their territory. As a matter of fact, by 2012, drone use along the border was highly prevalent as evidenced by U.S. interception of 150 drones carrying an estimated two metric tons of drugs; primarily marijuana, cocaine, and heroin.
Drones have started off to be a perfect drug mule in the sense that they are fraught with less risk to narcotics trafficking organisations, and their employees, who represent a major risk to any cartel by way of the arrested individual furnishing information about the drug operations. Additionally drones,when compared with their human counterparts cost significantly less, as a drug mule can earn as much as $10,000 for successful delivery of a single shipment.
The new Mexican-made drones are poles apart from the ones used for personal use as they can supposedly transport anywhere from 60-100 kilograms (132-220 lbs.) of drugs in a single trip. In terms of current use, drones used to transport narcotics usually operate during the night, and they never land on the U.S. soil. They simply drop the shipment and return to Mexico.
Drones are also being used to smuggle drugs, mobile phones and weapons into prisons. Prisons have tall walls,often with electrified fences and pointed structures to prevent prisoners from escaping as well as to isolate the prisoners from the public. The walls of the prison were never designed to secure it from drones and robots .Today the remote-operated drones and robots are posing a real threat to security as criminals have started using them as a tool to smuggle cell phones, drugs and dangerous weapons to jailbirds. The primary type of drones used for smuggling contraband are quadcopters.The quadcopters are controlled by smartphone. They have four arms, each with a motor and propeller. At the Provisional Detention Center, in São José dos Campos in São Paulo, Brazil, a quadcopter drone flew over the prison walls and dropped 250 grams of cocaine into the prison in the presence of Jail Officers. Near Moscow, a drone flew 700 grams Cocaine into the Tula prison, while in Greece, a drone carried a box of mobile phones. In April 2017, two men were jailed in the UK for using such drones to deliver Class A and B drugs and iPhones to inmates in three prisons across Herefordshire. Similar, prison intrusion incidents have been reported from Canada, UK, Australia and the U.S.A. A sophisticated UAV, capable of being precisely manoeuvred using GPS technology and carrying a payload of up to 1.5kg, can be brought for less than one lakh rupees and flown with minimal training. In 2015, UK, witnessed 33 such drone-related incidents in its prisons, while Australia witnessed six such incidents from New South Wales alone . In Canada, the federal agency responsible for prisons recorded 41 drone-related incidents at federal prisons between July 2013 and December 2016.
Hackers have also figured out how to use drones for intercepting communication by eavesdropping into phone calls as well as tracking movement of people by letting WASP hover in the neighbourhood of a target. WASP — short for “Wireless Aerial Surveillance” is an airborne hacking platform that can infiltrate Wi-Fi network, intercept mobile calls, jam radio signals, and even hack websites wirelessly.It has a cellular phone, small on-board Linux computer , 340-million-word dictionary, which the drone can use to generate passwords to get brute-force access into network in real time . It also embeds a software to read signals from ground-based phones and computer networks.It intercepts cell phone calls, literally by pretending to be a flying cell tower. Its signals fool phones on the ground, into relaying calls through it and allows hackers to record all phone calls and text messages that pass through any device that is being hacked. A hovering drone that picks up cell phone calls could also be used for good. Imagine sending one such drone to an area hit by an earthquake, where power and cellular service have been knocked out. The device would be great for providing emergency mobile access to such regions. A device with such interception capabilities would have cost several millions of dollars, but the makers of this device built it for just $6200. Criminals also would get to use such spy drones to steal intellectual property by hovering over corporations, or use it to jam mobile phone signals of their enemies or to distinguish a target, using the target’s cellphone to identify him in a crowd, and then follow his movements. It would also come handy for drug smuggling, or for terrorists to trigger a dirty bomb.
Can robots feel emotions and carry out a murder? This has been beautifully portrayed in the 2004 sci-fi film “I, Robot” directed by Alex Proyas. The film is set in 2035 AD, where robots are everyday objects and are programmed to live alongside humans. Detective Del Spooner is tasked to investigate the suicide of the robotic scientist, Dr Alfred Lanning. Spooner suspects that the death might not be a suicide, but a murder committed by one of the robots. Spooner’s suspicions, in the end, come true. Therefore, questions about criminal liability for robots may require to be answered sooner than we think — especially granted that self-driving cars and robot security guards already gallivant in some US cities.
Finally, can machines like robots and drones evolve to become spiritual like humans? For machines to be religious, they would have to be conscious, to have personal agency, and a sense of wonder. As human consciousness is composed of something non-physical, I firmly believe consciousness is not humanly creatable. But, Raymond Kurzweil an American inventor , futurist and the author of the book “ The Age of Spiritual Machines:” is convinced that the future machines will “proclaim to be conscious, and thus to be spiritual” and concludes “twenty-first-century machines” will go to church, meditate, and pray to connect with this spirituality.
Source from: epaper/deccanchronicle/chennai/dt:04.02.2019
Dr.K. Jayanth Murali is an IPS Officer belonging to 1991 batch. He is borne on Tamil Nadu cadre. He lives with his family in Chennai, India. He is currently serving the Government of Tamil Nadu as Additional Director General of Police, DVAC.
