Can we justify child participation in the UK military machine?
The involvement of children as young as 12 in the development of technology for the Ministry of Defence's recent Grand Challenge could be seen as taking us down a slippery slope leading to an ethically dangerous exploitation of children for warfare. The challenge was to build and program autonomous ground and aerial robots to identify threats such as marksmen, vehicles mounted with heavy weapons, roadside bombs and armed militia.
You may think that this is not a far cry from competitions like the TV show Robot Wars, but it is very different in intent. Robot Wars was about the destruction of other machines in a fun competition, while the aim of the Grand Challenge was to develop technology for urban warfare.
Thales, a UK defence company with MoD contracts for weapons systems, said that they wanted to engage a whole network of schools in the Challenge to bring excitement to the next generation of scientists and engineers. Some were as young as 12.
In a video interview, Dawn Allson from Thales said that they made it very clear that, "the Grand Challenge was all about defence and it's keeping people safe. That's it. We are not looking at weapons. We are looking about ways that we can make things as safe as possible and gather as much information as possible. And the schools were very happy about that."
Is this naivety, deception or a mixture of both? Making it safe for one side clearly makes it very unsafe for another. These children are being involved in the development of what can be seen as one component in a complex weapon system. Surely the point of identifying targets is to kill them?
I have nothing against the Grand Challenge in particular nor defence companies in general. They protect us from harm. If told the truth, many children would choose to go along with the development of lethal technologies. But they are a protected group who are not in a position to make that choice. One of the strongest justifications for excluding children from any attack under the Laws of Just War is that they do not contribute to the war effort. Is that the case here?
We are all responsible for the protection of children from activities that they may later come to regret and we need to keep a watchful eye on potential threats to exploit them for military aims before they are of consensual age. We should really think hard about whether or not the MoD Grand Challenge should be X-rated.
Noel Sharkey is professor of artificial intelligence and robotics at the University of Sheffield
