关于“致命自主武器”，你应该知道的From Land Mines to Drones, Tech Has Driven Fears About Autonomous Arms
ERIC LIPTON2023年11月22日
ShieldAI公司的新技术创造了通过人工智能协同工作的无人机。该公司正在与国防部合作，但目前还没有武装无人机。 ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES
Swarms of killer drones are likely to soon be a standard feature of battlefields around the world. That has ignited debate over how or whether to regulate their use and spurred concerns about the prospect of eventually turning life-or-death decisions over to artificial intelligence programs.
成群结队的无人机杀手可能很快就会成为世界各地战场的标配。这引发了如何或是否对其使用进行监管的讨论，并引发了人们对最终将生死决定权交给人工智能程序这一前景的担忧。
Here is an overview of how the technology has evolved, what types of weapons are being developed and how the debate is unfolding.
以下是该技术的发展简史、正在开发的武器类型，以及相关讨论是如何展开的。
How new are these weapons?
这些武器是新生事物吗？
Eventually, artificial intelligence should allow weapons systems to make their own decisions about selecting certain kinds of targets and striking them. Recent developments in A.I. tech have intensified the discussion around such systems, known as lethal autonomous weapons.
人工智能终将使得武器系统可以自行选择特定类型的目标，并发起打击。人工智能技术的最新发展推进了围绕这种被称为“致命自主武器”系统的讨论。
But in a way, autonomous weapons are hardly new.
但在某种程度上，自主武器并非新鲜事物。
Land mines, which are designed to discharge automatically when a person or object passes on top of them, were used as early as the 1800s during the Civil War in the United States, apparently first invented by a Confederate general named Gabriel J. Rains, who called them a “subterra shell.”
在人或物体从地雷上方经过时，它会自动爆炸，这种设计早在19世纪的美国内战期间就开始使用，据信是由一位名叫加布里埃尔·雷恩斯的南方军将军首先发明的，他把地雷称为“地下炮弹”。

在泰国，士兵们在受控引爆前处理地雷。 LILLIAN SUWANRUMPHA/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES
While they were first used long before anyone could even conceive of artificial intelligence, they have a relevance to the debate today because once put in place they operate with no human intervention — and without discriminating between intended targets and unintended victims.
虽然这些武器的首次使用远早于人们对人工智能的想象，但它们与今天的辩论存在关联，因为它们一旦投入使用，就不会受到人为干预，也不会区分预期目标和意外受害者。
The Pentagon began expanding automated weapons decades ago.
五角大楼几十年前就开始扩充自动化武器。
Starting in the late 1970s, the United States began to expand on this concept, with a weapon known as the Captor Anti-Submarine Mine. The mine could be dropped from an airplane or a ship and settle on the bottom of the ocean, sitting there until it automatically detonated when sensors on the device detected an enemy target.
从20世纪70年代末开始，美国开始扩展这一概念，推出了一种名为“捕获者反潜地雷”的武器。这种水雷可以从飞机或船只上投下，放置在海底，直到装置上的传感器探测到敌方目标时自动引爆。
Starting in the 1980s, dozens of Navy ships began to rely on the AEGIS weapon system, which uses a high-powered radar system to search for and track any incoming enemy missiles. It can be set on automatic mode so that it will fire off defensive missiles before a human intervenes.
从20世纪80年代开始，数十艘海军舰艇开始使用宙斯盾武器系统，该系统使用高功率雷达系统搜索和跟踪任何来袭的敌方导弹。它可以设置为自动模式，这样在人类介入之前，它就会发射防御性导弹。
Homing munitions were a next step.
制导武器系统是接下来的一步。
The next step in the progression toward more sophisticated autonomous weapons came in the form of “fire and forget” homing munitions like the AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missile, which has a radar seeker that refines the trajectory of a fired missile as it tries to destroy enemy planes.
朝着更复杂的自主武器发展的下一步以“发射后可以不管”的制导武器形式出现，比如AIM-120先进中程空对空导弹，这种导弹有一个雷达导引头，可以在导弹发射后试图摧毁敌机时，精确定位导弹的轨迹。
Homing munitions generally cannot be recalled after they are fired, and act like “an attack dog sent by police to run down a suspect,” wrote Paul Scharre, a former senior Pentagon official and author of the book “Army of None.” They have a certain degree of autonomy in refining their path, but Mr. Scharre defined it as “limited autonomy.” Harpoon anti-ship missiles operate in a similar fashion, with limited autonomy.
前五角大楼高级官员、《无人军队》(Army of None)一书的作者保罗·沙雷写道，制导武器在发射后通常无法召回，就像“警察派去追捕嫌疑人的警犬”。它们在完善自身路径方面有一定程度的自主权，但沙雷将其定义为“有限的自主权”。鱼叉反舰导弹的操作方式与此类似，是有限的自主权。

2003年，美军在波斯湾的小鹰号航空母舰上操作AIM-120导弹。 STEVE HELBER/ASSOCIATED PRESS
‘Loitering munitions’ can be highly automated.
“游荡武器系统”可以高度自动化。
The war in Ukraine has highlighted use of a form of automated weaponry, known as loitering munitions. These devices date to at least 1989, when an Israeli military contractor introduced what is known as Harpy, a drone that can stay in the air for about two hours, searching over hundreds of miles for enemy radar systems and then attacking them.
在乌克兰战争中，被称为“游荡武器系统”的自动化武器颇为醒目。这些设备至少可以追溯到1989年，当时一家以色列军事承包商推出了一种名为“哈比”(Harpy)的无人机，可以在空中停留大约两个小时，在数百公里的高空搜索敌人的雷达系统，然后对其进行攻击。
More recently, American military contractors like California-based AeroVironment have sold similar loitering munitions that carry an explosive warhead. The Switchblade 600, as this unit is called, flies overhead until it finds a tank or other target and then fires an anti-armor warhead.
最近，加州的AeroVironment公司等美国军事承包商也推出了携带爆炸弹头的类似游荡武器系统。这种装置被称为“弹簧刀600”，它在半空飞行，直到发现坦克或其他目标，然后发射一枚反装甲弹头。
Human sign-off is still requested before the weapon strikes the target. But it would be relatively simple to take the human “out of the loop,” making the device entirely autonomous.
在武器击中目标前仍然需要人类签字。但是，将人类“排除在外”，使设备完全自主是相对简单的。
“The technology exists today that you could say to the device, ‘Go find me a Russian T-72 tank, don’t talk to me, I’m going to launch you, go find that,’” said Wahid Nawabi, chairman of AeroVironment. “And if it has 80 percent-plus confidence that’s the one, it takes it out. The entire end-to-end mission could be all autonomous except firing it to begin with.”
“现在的技术可以让你对这个设备说，‘去给我找一辆俄罗斯T-72坦克，别跟我说话，我要发射你了，去找它吧，’”AeroVironment公司董事长瓦希德·纳瓦比说。“如果它有80%以上的把握，认为找到了那辆坦克，它就会把目标干掉。整个端到端任务都可以是完全自主的，除了一开始的发射。”

AeroVironment公司的Switchblade 600在马里兰州国家港口举行的海军博览会上展出。 JASON ANDREW FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES
Unleashing drone swarms could be a bigger shift.
释放无人机群可能是一个更大的转变。
There is no question about where this is all headed next.
下一步的方向毫无疑问。
The Pentagon is now working to build swarms of drones, according to a notice it published earlier this year.
根据今年早些时候发布的一份通告，五角大楼正在努力建造无人机群。
This end result is expected to be a network of hundreds or even thousands of A.I.-enhanced, autonomous drones carrying surveillance equipment or weapons. Drones would most likely be positioned near China so they could be rapidly deployed if conflict broke out, and would be used to knock out or at least degrade the extensive network of anti-ship and anti aircraft missile systems China has built along its coasts and artificial islands in the South China Sea.
预计最终结果将是一个由数百甚至数千架搭载监视设备或武器的人工智能增强型自主无人机组成的网络。无人机最有可能部署在中国附近，这样一旦冲突爆发，它们就可以迅速部署，并用来摧毁或至少削弱中国在其沿海和南中国海的人工岛屿上建立的广泛的反舰和防空导弹系统网络。
That is just one of a blitz of efforts now underway at the Pentagon aiming to deploy thousands of inexpensive, autonomous and at times lethal drones in the next year or two that can continue to operate even when GPS signals and communications are jammed.
这只是五角大楼目前正在进行的一系列努力之一，其目标是在未来一两年部署数千架廉价、自主、有时甚至致命的无人机，它们即使在GPS信号和通信受到干扰时也能继续运行。
Some military contractors, including executives at Palantir Technologies, a major artificial intelligence military contractor, had argued that entirely autonomous A.I.-controlled lethal attacks could still be years away, as the most advanced algorithms are not yet reliable enough, and so cannot be trusted to autonomously make life or death decisions, and may not be for some time.
一些军事承包商，包括主要的人工智能军事承包商Palantir科技的高管在内，曾认为完全自主的人工智能控制的致命攻击可能还需要数年时间，因为最先进的算法还不够可靠，因此不能放心让它来自主做出生死攸关的决定，而且可能在一段时间内都不会。
A.I., Palantir argues, will instead allow military officials to make faster and more accurate targeting decisions by quickly analyzing incoming waves of data, Courtney Bowman, a Palantir executive told British legislators during a hearing this year.
Palantir的高管考特尼·鲍曼在今年的一次听证会上对英国议员说，Palantir认为，人工智能将允许军方官员通过快速分析传入的数据，做出更快、更准确的目标决策。
But there is widespread concern within the United Nations about the risks of the new systems. And while some weapons have long had a degree of autonomy built into them, the new generation is fundamentally different.
但在联合国内部，人们普遍担心新系统的风险。虽然一些武器早就内置了一定程度的自主性，但新一代武器却有着根本的不同。
“When this conversation started about a decade ago, it really was kind of science fiction,” Mr. Scharre said. “And now it’s not at all. The technology is very, very real.”
“大约十年前，当这个话题开始的时候，它真的有点像科幻小说，”沙雷说。“现在一点也不是了。这项技术非常、非常真实。”
Eric Lipton是一名调查记者，他深入研究从五角大楼支出到有毒化学品等广泛的话题。点击查看更多关于他的信息。

翻译：晋其角

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