AI and Warfare

In this episode, Byron talks about autonomous weapons and robots. For more on Artificial Intelligence: https://voicesinai.com https://gigaom.com https://byronreese.com https://ift.tt/31WftGA... Transcript: Technology has changed the face of warfare dozens of times in the past few thousand years. Metallurgy, the horse, the chariot, gunpowder, the stirrup, artillery, planes, atomic weapons, and computers each had a major impact on how we chose to slaughter each other. Robots and AI will change it all again. Should we build weapons systems that can make autonomous kill decisions based on factors programmed into the robots? Proponents maintain that the robots may reduce the number of civilian deaths since the robots will follow protocol exactly. In a split second, a soldier subjected to fatigue or fear, can make a literally fatal mistake. To a robot, however, a split second is all the time in the world. This may well be true, but it is not the primary motivation of the militaries of the world to adopt robots with AI. There are three reasons these weapons are compelling to them: First, they will be more effective at their mission than human soldiers. Second, there's a fear that potential adversaries are developing the technologies. And third, they'll reduce the casualties of the militaries that deploy them. This last one is a chilling side effect. It could make warfare more common by lowering the political costs of it. The central issue at present is whether or not a machine should be allowed to independently decide to kill someone or spare someone. I'm not being overly dramatic when I say the decision at hand is whether or not we should build killer robots. There is not a “can we” involved; no one doubts that we can. The question is, “Should we?”