The thought of infusing AI into weapons immediately evokes deep fears, not only based on the idea that autonomous weapons may make life-and-death decisions on our behalf, but also on the prospect of errors creeping in. But for Palmer Luckey, founder of Anduril Industries, there’s no alternative but to add intelligence into the weapons systems of tomorrow.
“It’s a scary idea, but, I mean, that’s the world we live in. I’d say it’s a lot scarier, for example, to imagine a weapons system that doesn’t have any level of intelligence at all. There’s no moral high ground to making a land mine that can’t tell the difference between a school bus full of children and Russian armor.”
Dumb vs smart weapons
Luckey was speaking in a Q&A portion of a TED talk when he made the comparison between the weapons of today and the AI-powered weapons of tomorrow.
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The talk was themed around his notion that adding intelligence to weapons systems could prevent future catastrophes, based on the notion of deterrence preventing different superpowers from waging war.
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On the subject of the ethics of incorporating AI into weapons, Luckey pointed out that ‘dumb weapons’ may indiscriminately kill without context or an understanding of a particular target.
He used a land mine as an example of a weapon that may kill innocents or combatants – possibilities that wouldn’t be considered ethically superior to his vision for smart weapons.
Intelligence-driven warfare
The rise of AI weapons has been quick but consequential, with new technologies being deployed on battlefields across the world. The war between Russia and Ukraine, in particular, has shown the potential for automated systems to dominate conflicts.
But the use of AI doesn’t end at weaponry. It also involves the use of machine learning, for example, to classify different moving elements from several sources of imagery. It’s the holistic picture, Luckey argues, from which he draws his conclusions rather than isolated implementations.
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