[Editor’s Note: This is a write-up of a workshop proceedings. It is posted under my name, but the participants wrote the piece; they are listed at the end.] If Politics and IR urgently needs to discuss our approach to AI and pedagogy. The reverse is equally true. In...
In some sense, it is with a heavy heart that I write my last permanent contributor blog post at the Duck. I’ve loved being with the Ducks these past years, and I’ve appreciated being able to write...
Having recently attended a workshop and conference on beneficial artificial intelligence (AI), one of the overriding concerns is how to design beneficial AI. To do this, the AI needs to be aligned...
This post is a co-authored piece: Heather M. Roff, Jamie Winterton and Nadya Bliss of Arizona State's Global Security Initiative We’ve recently been informed that the Clinton campaign relied heavily...
The common understanding in military circles is that the more data one has, the more information one possess. More information leads to better intelligence, and better intelligence produces greater situational awareness. Sun Tzu rightly understood this cycle two millennia ago: “Intelligence is the essence in warfare—it is what the armies depend upon in their every move.” Of course, for him, intelligence could only come from people, not from various types of sensor data, such as radar signatures or ship’s pings. Pursuing the data-information-intelligence chain is the intuition behind the...
Much of the present debate over autonomous weapons systems (AWS) focuses on their use in war. On one side, scholars argue that AWS will make war more inhumane (Asaro, 2012), that the decision to kill must be a human being’s choice (Sharkey, 2010), or that they will make war more likely because conflict will be less costly to wage with them (Sparrow, 2009). On the other side, scholars argue that AWS will make war more humane, as the weapons will be greater at upholding the principles of distinction and proportionality (Müller and Simpson, 2014), as well as providing greater force protection...
In fall of 2014, former Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced his plan to maintain US superiority against rising powers (i.e. Russia and China). His claim was that the US cannot lose its technological edge – and thus superiority – against a modernizing Russia and a rapidly militarizing China. To ensure this edge, he called for the “third Offset Strategy.” The previous two offset strategies were premised on Cold War rivalry and the belief that one can outspend the other through arms races. The first offset desired to gain dominance over Soviet Russia’s feared advantage in manpower...
Over the New Year, I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at an event on the future of Artificial Intelligence (AI) hosted by the Future of Life Institute. The purpose of the event was to think through the various aspects of the future of AI, from its economic impacts, to its technological abilities, to its legal implications. I was asked to present on autonomous weapons systems and what those systems portend for the future. The thinking was that an autonomous weapon is, after all, one run on some AI software platform, and if autonomous weapons systems continue to proceed on their...
Keeping up with the current engagement with artificial intelligence (AI) is a full time task. Today in the New York Times, two (here and here) lead articles in the technology section were about AI, and another discussed the future of robotics and AI and the workforce. As I blogged last week, the coming economic future of robotics and AI is going to have to contend with some very weighty considerations that are making our society more and more economically, socially and racially divided. Today, however, I’d like to think about how a society might view an AI, particularly one that is...
One might think that looking to the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and the recent spate of police brutality against African American males, particularly Michael Brown and Eric Garner, are remotely related if they are related at all. However, I want to press us to look at two seemingly unrelated practices (racial discrimination and technological progress) and look to what the trajectory of both portend. I am increasingly concerned about the future of AI, and what the unintended consequences that increased reliance on it will yield. Today, I’d like to focus on just one of those...
The Pew Research Internet Project released a report yesterday, “AI, Robotics, and the Future of Jobs” where it describes a bit of a contradictory vision: the future is bright and the future is bleak. The survey, issued to a nonrandomized group of “experts” in the technology industry and academia, asked particular questions about the future impacts of robotic and artificial intelligence advances. What gained the most attention from the report is the contradictory findings on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation on jobs. According to Pew, 48% of respondents feel that by...