Robots as Actors in a Film: No War, A Robot Story
This work provides a creative, fictional scenario for engineers and roboticists to reflect on ethical implications of robots in warfare, but it is an artistic project rather than a technical contribution.
The paper presents a short comedy film featuring robots as actors to explore whether robots would join human warfare, using coded instructions to direct robot performances in each scene.
Will the Third World War be fought by robots? This short film is a light-hearted comedy that aims to trigger an interesting discussion and reflexion on the terrifying killer-robot stories that increasingly fill us with dread when we read the news headlines. The fictional scenario takes inspiration from current scientific research and describes a future where robots are asked by humans to join the war. Robots are divided, sparking protests in robot society... will robots join the conflict or will they refuse to be employed in human warfare? Food for thought for engineers, roboticists and anyone imagining what the upcoming robot revolution could look like. We let robots pop on camera to tell a story, taking on the role of actors playing in the film, instructed through code on how to "act" for each scene.