Paul Murphy questions autonomy and governance of defence robotics

Thanks a lot for coming before us. Maybe just to pick up on one thing, so when we've heard from human rights experts about this, the main thing they've run alarm bells about is autonomous weaponry of various sorts presenting a fundamental challenge to human rights, potential for discrimination, all these things. And when Dr. Toll was asked earlier about autonomous, you said something about anything you're involved in always as a human on the loop as opposed to in the loop. But in the opening statement, you state that heterogeneous autonomous systems are precisely what the Defence Forces, Naval Service, Air Corps, Coast Guard and An Garda Síochána need. Is there a contradiction there or am I missing something? So autonomous heterogeneous systems, if you go to sea and your drone has a half hour capability, if you go with an autonomous surface vessel with the drone on board, so it's multiple robots or a subsea robot from a surface vessel. So if that's linked with the Coast Guard or linked with the Navy or linked with fisheries, that might be tied back to another vessel which could be Naval, Marine Institute vessel, research vessel, etc. But are they autonomous or are they not autonomous? Sorry? Are you in favour of, do you say that autonomous things, autonomous systems are precisely what these organisations need? I think they can be autonomous, but I think if Ireland signs up, like they have done to the anti-multiple munitions and many other treaties, I think Ireland will be, and politicians will be, likely to sign us up to international agreements which leave human responsibility in effectively all autonomous systems in that scenario. That's my belief and that's what I think would be correct. So are you saying that we precisely need autonomous systems or we don't precisely need autonomous systems? You're using the word autonomous as if autonomous systems can still have human oversight. That's what I'm trying to get at. It's not the whole definition of autonomous is that it doesn't necessarily… I do not mean absolutely fully autonomous where they're operating by themselves, but if you have some Mars rover operating on Mars, it's a 40 minute delay, so you can't have the human pilot controlling in real time, but you can have the human pilot controlling it at the command mission level. Would you say CRIS, you spoke earlier about the need to grow what you described as our defence sector, would you see the CRIS as part of a growing military industrial complex in this country? No. Why? So robotics, we're at this committee, this committee is focused on AI and defence and Ireland does need AI and defence, but we have not been committed to developing robotics for military applications. Some of the organisations that you work beside are, I mean you referenced positively earlier ATICSIN, which explicitly creates target drones for military use and you're involved in work with that. We also all fly in Boeing and Boeing make a large portion of the missiles that are used in various… But therefore you are kind of integrated into this network of companies that are involved in military use. Everybody who buys an air ticket climbs on board a Boeing. You don't think there's a difference? You're involved in developing and helping to develop the technology. No, no, no, we are not developing technology for weapon systems. So that's some of the tension that will be in dual use. Dual use is effectively anything that can have a non-military application and a military application. Yes, you develop technology that may be used, it doesn't involve the shooting bit, but it may be used in drones that do the shooting. That's also true with anybody involved in developing car technology and also driving of cars. But I think there is a moral distinction between someone buying a plane and flying on a Boeing and developing technology that goes into it. But anyway, and that's a question of policy whether we should be supporting this. No, I disagree. I think if you are involved in automotive research for autonomous driving, that's exactly the same technology you put in a tank. I was disputing not that comparison but the earlier thing about buying a ticket. But in any case, when you talk about the National Field Robotics Centre, which is obviously your big takeaway from this, would you envisage partnerships between that centre and companies that are part of what you call the defence sector, what I call the military industrial complex? I personally don't. So to some extent, there's a governance piece there that has... We brought this proposal and we got feedback from the defers and some of the areas they wish us to further develop include the governance. So that's a governance piece which has to be trashed out. So I don't think it's a choice of either of us really. But if it's nationally funded, it's a piece that has to be addressed in that development. Just finally, is there any collaboration by Chris with Israeli organisations or academics or companies? One exception. We're involved in a deep sea mining project where we're developing technology in deep sea mining. There is a Israeli partner on the publicisation of research results. That was brought to our attention by the research office a number of years ago. And looking at and analysing the company that was involved, that's effectively a PR type company, with UL clearance, we proceeded. But within our group, we have committed that we jointly do not wish to partner in any European project that has Israeli partners at the moment. That's not a directive from UL, that's an agreement of the researchers involved who were applying for that research. Thank you.