The Pentagon earlier ordered the creation of an AI system for its strike drones, but the contractor, Alphabet Inc. (Google's parent company), had to ditch the project over protests from its own employees.
Former Deputy Defence Secretary and staunch proponent of military AI use, Robert Work, has called the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (CSKR) “terribly unethical” and “immoral”, arguing that its founders and members should look at other potentially harmful AI uses instead of trying to prevent the creation of Terminator-like armies from James Cameron movies.
“They refer to ‘lethal autonomous weapons systems' [but] the weapon doesn't exist! It might not even be technically feasible. […] In the meantime, they're willing to say, ‘I'm willing to sacrifice the lives of American servicemen and women, I'm willing to take more civilian casualties, and I'm willing to take more collateral damage, on the off chance that sometime in the future this weapon will exist'”, Work said during a conference at Johns Hopkins University.
Work further argued that even if autonomous battlefield units were to be created, no “western army, certainly the United States” would use such a weapon, claiming they are “bound by law, policy, and tradition”. At the same time, the former military official noted that CSKR's efforts might prevent armies from using the AI aiding systems in weaponry, something which could potentially reduce the number of…
