“Look after the world, child!” sings Israel’s remarkable contra-tenor David D’Or. “Because…we [adults] cannot.”

Perhaps our children will take better care of our world, its markets and its climate, than we did. They cannot do worse.  But they will have help from amazing robots. And Israel is leading the way. 

While modern Israel may not exactly be a “light unto the nations,” as the prophet Isaiah promised, it may be becoming  a source of ‘robots unto the nations.’ Some of these robots have military uses; some are civilian. All  have the potential to save or improve our lives and to make warfare more moral. The era of moral machines has begun, perhaps constraining immoral humans.  

Israel already has pioneered pilotless drones, a mainstay of air forces in Israel, U.S. and elsewhere. Now, according to the Associated Press, the IDF (Israel Defense Forces) has The Guardium, an unmanned ground vehicle that never sleeps while on guard duty and carries 300 kgs. (660 pounds) without whining. And its family does not miss it when it is on reserve duty. The Guardium is operated from a control room far from the battle scene and navigates through complex urban areas that could endanger live soldiers. The Guardium was developed by an Israeli company, G-Nius, headed by Erez Peled.  

Last Spring, Channel 10 reported that the IDF was about to introduce an unmanned jeep into the Gaza conflict. It was developed jointly by Elbit Systems and Israel Aerospace Industries. 

Not all the robots are military. An Israeli company called Friendly Robotics, founded in 1995 by Udi Peless and Shai Abramson, developed a robotic vacuum cleaner, a robotic lawn mower and a robot that could take out the trash. The little lawn mower, called Robomow, is amazing. Its owner sits in a lawn chair with a cool mint julep, watching the machine mow her lawn. It once starred on the cover of the famous Hammacher Schlemmer gift catalog. But the robots, though Friendly, might be a tad too expensive. Robomow costs $1,599.

Will robots help us make a better world? Georgia Institute of Technology researcher Ronald Arkin thinks so. He told the International Herald Tribune that robots “can behave more ethically in the battlefield than humans currently can.” Arkin is writing software that could make fighting robots operate within ethical bounds, something human soldiers find difficult in the heat and emotion of battle. Arkin is a religious Christian. He thinks you could build the Geneva Convention into the machine’s mental architecture.  

This idea is, of course, old hat. The science fiction writers thought of it long ago. In his 1942 sci-fi short story Runaround, Isaac Asimov promulgated the moral laws that would govern the behavior of robots.  

The first law? “A robot may not injure a human being, or allow a human being to come to harm.” Imagine a world where all human beings followed that law, not just robots. If both humans and robots followed it, it would be very difficult to stage wars or genocides. 

Some of the world’s most advanced work on robotics is done at Ben Gurion University. There, researchers have built “robot snakes” able to slither on the floor and pass through pipes. And, notes Dr. Amir Shapira, they have built a “cat-bot” or “dog-droid” that scales walls by releasing glue through its wheels. Had the IDF possessed them in 1994, perhaps they could have saved the abducted soldier Nahman Wachsman, who unbeknownst to the commandos sent to rescue him, was held prisoner on the second floor. That lack of knowledge cost Wachsman his life. The cat-bot could have found it out. 

The word robot was invented by the Czech playwright Karel Capek in his 1921 drama R.U.R.  His hugely popular play showed how humanity could be dehumanized by technology, in the form of robots. Capek himself did not believe in moral machines or machines that could live and love. (Asimov did – his fictional robots do fall in love). Capek felt robots would be a “grave offense against life.”

Perhaps. But perhaps not. Let’s face it. Morally, we humans are a mess. Just look around the world. Perhaps machines could do better. And Israel is at the forefront of the innovators who supply them. Could this be what Isaiah had in mind?