Pages

22 July 2024

Here Comes Terminator: Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Predicts U.S. Military Will be Armed With Robots

Peter Suciu 

-Current policies mandate human control over lethal munitions, but AI advancements may change this. As recruitment struggles persist, autonomous systems are increasingly viewed as a solution.

-The U.S. Army, Air Force, and Navy are integrating AI and robotics into their operations. However, the ethical implications of AI making life-and-death decisions remain a concern. Other nations, including China and Russia, are also developing autonomous military platforms, raising global stakes.
Robots to Constitute One-Third of U.S. Military by 2039, Predicts Former Joint Chiefs Chairman

In what could almost certainly sound like the backstory for a future science fiction film, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the U.S. military could see one-third of its force composed of robots and other autonomous systems by the end of 2039.

Cue the theme to The Terminator, and plan for the rise of the machines!

“Ten to fifteen years from now, my guess is a third, maybe 25% to a third of the U.S. military will be robotic,” retired U.S. Army general Mark Milley explained earlier this month at an Axios event to launch the outlet’s “Future of Defense” newsletter.

These wouldn’t be remotely controlled systems, like most of today’s unmanned aerial systems, but rather robotic platforms that could be controlled and even directly commanded by artificial intelligence (AI) systems. However, Milley acknowledged that technology doesn’t have any mortality. For that reason, current U.S. policy still stipulates that a human operator is in control when it comes to the use of lethal munitions and that it requires a human to maintain the “ethical framework” for any decisionmaking.

No comments:

Post a Comment