When May a Robot Kill? New DOD Policy Tries to Clarify
An updated policy tweaks wording in a bid to dispel confusion.
PATRICK TUCKER | JANUARY 25, 2023 06:18 PM ET
AI & AUTONOMY PENTAGON
Did you think the Pentagon had a hard rule against using lethal autonomous weapons? It doesn’t. But it does have hoops to jump through before such a weapon might be deployed—and, as of Wednesday, a revised policy intended to clear up confusion.
The biggest change in the Defense Department’s new version of its 2012 doctrine on lethal autonomous weapons is a clearer statement that it is possible to build and deploy them safely and ethically but not without a lot of oversight.
That’s meant to clear up the popular perception that there’s some kind of a ban on such weapons. “No such requirement appears in [the 2012 policy] DODD 3000.09, nor any other DOD policy,” wrote Greg Allen, the director of the Artificial Intelligence Governance Project and a senior fellow in the Strategic Technologies Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2023/01/when-may-robot-kill-new-dod-policy-tries-clarify/382215/
