Page 45 - Federal Computer Week, May/June 2019

could absolutely make the situation worse; we’re very sensitive about it.
Have you started designing
the drones? Will that have an impact on how people interact with the technology?
If you’ve ever had a drone buzzing in your face, I’m not sure there’s a way to react other than with anger. All of that’s real. A ground robot that crawls up to you [and] into your personal space is not going
to elicit a positive response. But
at some point, that is appropriate to let people know we’re serious. There’s a spectrum of probing and solicitations, but we have to
start with some suspicion and shouldn’t terrorize people who
are not suspicious.
We started the legal, moral and ethical considerations before we even awarded the contracts so we could get ahead of this. A panel of lawyers, ethicists, philosophers and academics meets quarterly to pro- vide written technical guidance.
Harm has many forms. Clearly, warning shots have a greater potential for harm than just a mes- sage. Hopefully, warning shots are never necessary, but we have to understand this spectrum of the possibility of harm. It’s never been done — only theorized. We have to reduce that theory to practice. Because the performers just want a number. When we design AI, it’s just math.
Is it going to be right [on the first try]? Absolutely not, but it’ll be bet-
ter than the nothing we have now.
And then there are the cultural differences between allies and subjects that have to be considered. Absolutely.
What are the milestones for
URSA in the next 18 months?
The first phase is 18 months, so at the end we’ll have a demonstration from each of the performers on their approaches and have a down- select into Phase 2 to about two performers.
We expect experiments from each in the meantime of whatever they have ready in simulation, augmented reality and field experimentation, culminating with real social science experiments with robotics. n
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