The Pentagon's newest weapons will require no human input, as artificial intelligence and autonomous drones take the forefront of defense strategy.
"If Stanley Kubrick directed 'Dr. Strangelove' again, it would be about the issue of autonomous weapons," Michael Schrage, research fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management, told The New York Times.
The Defense Department has spent billions of dollars on developing autonomous and semiautonomous weaponry. Robotic fighter jets that can fly alongside manned aircraft, drones that can identify armed targets, and ships that can hunt enemy submarines over thousands of miles without any human assistance.
"China and Russia are developing battle networks that are as good as our own," Robert O. Work, deputy defense secretary and top proponent for autonomous weapons, told the Times. "They can see as far as ours can see; they can throw guided munitions as far as we can. What we want to do is just make sure that we would be able to win as quickly as we have been able to do in the past."
"The one thing that has the widest application to the widest number of D.O.D. missions is artificial intelligence and autonomy," he added.
Although, in life and death decisions, "there will always be a man in the loop," Work confirms.
A recent open letter from the Future of Life Institute, signed by over 8,000 researchers and scientists, including Tesla head Elon Musk and noted physicist Stephen Hawking, warns against the rise of autonomous weapons.
"The key question for humanity today is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting," the letter read. "If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable, and the endpoint of this technological trajectory is obvious: autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow.”
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