Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Scary Headline

I just saw a headline saying that China is ahead of the U.S. in developing artificial intelligence weapons.

What?

I imagine some computer deciding how to use weapons to kill people and destroy things. This sounds way too much like The Matrix. Computer driven tanks or planes could engage each other in battle, and we could just watch it all play out.

This also sounds like Robo-Cop. Some artificial intelligence machine could be used to take out enemies, both military and political. How can you survive interrogation by a computer? How could we let military decisions be made by any non-human entity?

Maybe I'm exaggerating the threat of these weapons. Or maybe these kinds of weapons should be banned like chemical weapons. It seems like the risks are far too great for us to start heading down this path.

If the Chinese are ahead of the U.S. in developing these weapons, then that means we are developing them too. Maybe we should rethink that.