But wait. Just because we can do something, does that mean that we want to—or should? The central ethical challenge, framed by Ronald Arkin in his research on the topic for the US Army Research Office, is this: get autonomous robots to behave “within the bounds prescribed by the Laws of War and Rules of Engagement.”[216] “The advent of autonomous robotics in the battlefield,” writes Arkin, “as with any new technology, is primarily concerned with Jus in Bello [acceptable limits to conduct in war], that is, defining what constitutes the ethical use of these systems during conflict, given military necessity.”[217] Arkin’s goal—which I support wholeheartedly—is to have our military robots outperform our human soldiers in terms of ethical conduct. Evolving robots need a conscience.
FIGURE 8.4. So many possible paths, so little retro-futuristic time. The author points in the conceptual direction that he predicts the field of evolutionary biorobotics will take. He is correct 100 percent of the time.
Predicting the future is even easier than understanding the past. That is the fundamental tenet (tenet number 1), as I see it, of the art movement created by Lloyd Dunn, known as Retrofuturism (Figure 8.4). As you’ve seen in this chapter, I’ve been able to predict, with virtually no data to support my arguments, a scenario in which we are at the beginning of a new kind of military arms race. Evolving robots, I claim, will alter the way we fight wars and defend ourselves. For retrofuturistic completeness I should also predict the exact opposite (tenet number 2), namely that evolving robots are a trivial sideshow in the growing field of robotics and have nothing to tell us about the future of warfare.
I don’t really think that the second prediction is true. Too bad. In all seriousness, this chapter has been a bummer, right? Who wants to talk about war and autonomous killing machines when we can talk about studying the evolution of the first vertebrates instead? I don’t. But the reality is that evolving robots are and will be created for academic, industrial, and military purposes. This means that we should all become students of robots of any kind, whether they be evolving robots, nonevolving autonomous robots, or semiautonomous and remotely controlled military robots. We need to understand robots so we can proceed with due caution and deliberation. No secrets. No surprises.
Now for an apology. In this book I’ve covered just a tiny sliver of the world of robotics: evolving robots. And I haven’t even done that little bit justice. I’m sorry. For example, I’ve talked mostly about the work done by myself and my collaborators, referring just occasionally and superficially to the great researchers who have inspired us: Ronald Arkin, who is creating the field of robot ethics after unifying behavior-based robotics together; Barbara Webb, who created biorobotics; Stefano Nolfi and Dario Floreano, who created evolutionary robotics; and Valentino Braitenberg and Rodney Brooks, who cocreated the field of behavior-based robotics that jump-started all of the above. To help overcome my guilt for giving all these masters short shrift, I’ll tell you that they all have written great books on their subjects, and you should read them.
I should make a parallel apology for the world of evolutionary biology. With a head start of over a hundred years on robotics, evolutionary biology and my omissions of name are more difficult to characterize and recognize. I can tell you that I’ve largely ignored the fascinating world of EvoDevo, the evolution of ontogenies and the constraints and possibilities that developmental systems give to the species they construct. Sean Carroll is the place to start reading there. Vertebrate paleontologists like David Raup, Steven Stanley, Robert Carroll, and Michael Benton ought to feel slighted because they have carried the torch and blazed the trail with their excellent textbooks. The great biomechanicists, McNeil Alexander, Tom Daniel, John Gosline, Mark Denny, Paul Webb, Andy Biewener, get nary a mention. You have to leave out a lot, I’ve learned, when you write a book.
And finally, here’s a parting shot, a reminder of one of the concepts that I consider most important and most often misunderstood: evolution. I’ve been using the word “evolution” throughout this book not in its causal, on-the-street sense of directed, progressive, optimizing design but rather in its scientific sense: a change in a population of agents over generational time, in a given environment, caused by random genetic processes coupled with selection, where selection results from the interaction of individual agents with and within their physical environments.
We’ve talked about, designed, experimented with, and analyzed the behavior of two types of robots: (1) Evolvabots, which change in ways that we can’t predict with certainty when they constitute a population with genetic inheritance and selection pressure; (2) Evolutionary Trekkers, which we create to be of a certain form in order to help us understand how extinct or never-existing forms may have behaved in a given environment. Both Evolvabots and ETs are built to test ideas about evolution as a process (how things can evolve), specific evolutionary events (selection pressures), or specific evolutionary situations (big, four-flippered animals).
Although I’ve focused on fish and aquatic vertebrates in this book, just keep in mind that you can use Evolvabots and ETs to model any kind of critter.
So long, and thanks for all the robotic fish.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book exists because of the creativity, hard work, and acumen of three terrific professionals. Jeff Kosmacher, director of media relations and public affairs at Vassar College; my agent, Laura Wood, of FinePrint Literary Management; and my editor, T. J. Kelleher of Basic Books. Jeff got Mike Hill, of the Associated Press, to report on our evolving robots. Laura read Mike’s story, conceived of a book, convinced me to write it, and then found it a wonderful home at Basic Books. T. J. gave me the freedom to write what I wished and then skillfully reworked the manuscript into a book. My respect and appreciation for this trio are infinite.
My thanks to the team at Basic Books who provided invaluable support: Sandra Beris, project editor; Josephine Mariea, copyeditor; Tisse Takagi, associate editor; Michele Jacob, VP and director of publicity; and Andrea Bussell, publicity manager.
Two environments have allowed me to thrive: home and work. Meg, Isabel, Adele, Madeleine, Tamasin, Capercaillie, and Kookaburra have made family life bustling, bright, and restorative. Karabadangbaraka! In the Biology Department at Vassar I’ve been lucky to have generous and inspiring colleagues: Jerry Calvin, Lynn Christenson, Tebbie Collins, Pauline Contelmo, Erica Crespi, Jeremy Davis, Kelli Duncan, David Esteban, Dick Hemmes, Barbara Holloway, David Jemiolo, Jason Jones, Jenni Kennell, Betsy Ketcham, Sue Lerner, Ann Mehaffey, Leathem Mehaffey, Bonnie Milne, Sue Painter, Marshall Pregnall, Mark Schlessman, Bill Straus, Kate Susman, Bob Suter, Nancy Pokrywka, Jodi Schwarz, Lina Spallone, Julie Williams, and Keri VanCamp. In the Cognitive Science Program Jan Andrews, Gwen Broude, Carol Christensen, Kathleen Hart, Ken Livingston, and Carolyn Palmer have all been adventurous enough to team-teach with me and, in so doing, serve as my tutors in the vast multidisciplinary field that is cognitive science.
The research in this book is the joyous consequence of working with brilliant, happy collaborators, folks whom Laura would call “fun-loving nerds who want to learn something cool.” Six have been fool enough to work with me continually for the past ten to twenty years: Tom Koob (MiMedx Group, Inc.), Chun Wai Liew (Lafayette College), Ken Livingston (Vassar), Matt McHenry (University of California, Irvine), Charles Pell (Physcient, Inc.), and Robert Root (Lafayette College). Others showing questionable judgment in their professional affiliations include, at Vassar College, Carl Bertsche, Peter Czuwala, Larry Doe, Tom Ellman, Luke Hunsberger, Barbara Holloway, Betsy Ketcham, Jason Jones, Josh de Leeuw, Nick Livingston, Marianne Porter, Bradley Richards, Bob Suter, and John Vanderlee; Melina Hale and Mark Westneat at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum; Ann Pabst and Bill McLellan at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington; Matthieu Kemp and Brett Hobson at Nekton Research, Inc.; Farshad Khorrami and Prashanth Krishnamurthy at Farco Technologies, Inc. and New York University; Miriam Ashley-Ross (Wake Forest University), Barbara Block (Stanford University), Hugh Crenshaw (Physicient, Inc.), Shelley Etnier (Butler University), Randy Ewoldt (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Frank Fish (West Chester University), Alice Gibb (Northern Arizona University), Sindre Grotmol (University of Bergen), Mary and Jack Hebrank (Duke University and North Carolina State University), Lena Koob-Emunds (Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory), Doug Pringle (MiMedx Group, Inc.), Fred Schachet (Duke University), Justin Schaefer (University of California, Los Angeles), William “Bart” Shepherd (Steinhart Aquarium), Jim Strother (University of California, Irvine), Adam Summers (University of Washington), and Phil Watts (Applied Fluids Engineering, Inc).
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Ronald Arkin, an expert robotics engineer, is the leader in considering both the practical and philosophical aspects of the ethics of using robots in war. His first paper on the subject is a good place to start: “Governing Lethal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture—Part 1: Motivation and Philosophy,”
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Ronald Arkin,