Ethics in AI Seminar: AI, Ethics, and War

The age of artificial intelligence (AI) has already begun. Just as AI has influenced commerce, education, finance, and transportation, it will undoubtedly influence the future of war. In the not very distant future, the world's advanced militaries are likely to rely upon AI tools in logistics, planning, command and control, and even targeting. This change in the character of war--what some of called "algorithmic warfare"--raises a number of questions, in particular about the reliability of algorithms for identifying legitimate targets, about asymmetries between belligerents which have access to AI-enhanced weapons and those which don’t, and about a new ‘arms race’. Does AI require that we develop new ethical principles for the resort to and conduct in war, or are existing normative frameworks serviceable? How can governments safely and responsibly regulate the development and use of these systems? Do different applications of AI raise distinct ethical problems and call for distinct ethical solutions. Chair: Peter Millican, Gilbert Ryle Fellow and Professor of Philosophy at Hertford College, Oxford University