Waterloo-based robotic vehicle manufacturer Clearpath Robotics is the first robotics company to sign on with the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots “an international coalition of non-governmental organizations working to ban fully autonomous weapons.”
The aptly-named Campaign To Stop Killer Robots seeks legislation and regulation that would block people from having access to or creating robotic weapons that can make decisions to kill without human intervention.
As the main conceit behind the campaign goes, “giving machines the power to decide who lives and dies on the battlefield is an unacceptable application of technology.”
Meghan Hennessey, marketing communications manager at Clearpath, told Business Insider, “I came across the campaign, and [company CTO and co-founder] Ryan Gariepy was on board with their ideas. We’re the first company in the robotics industry to step forward on this issue.”
Clearpath is a five-year-old company gaining massive traction in research and development for unmanned robotics. Its client list is impressive, boasting names like the Canadian Space Agency, Google, and MIT. Most interestingly, this list also includes the Department of National Defense and the Navy — exactly the entities that might want a fully autonomous weapon that can function without a human operator.
“Even though we’re not building weapons now, that might become an opportunity for us in the future,” said Hennessey. “We’re choosing to value our ethics over potential future revenue.”
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