Lethal autonomous weapons represent the novel miniaturization and integration of modern AI and robotics technologies for military use. This emerging technology thus represents a potentially critical inflection point in the development of AI governance. Whether we allow AI to make the decision to take human life and where we draw lines around the acceptable and unacceptable uses of this technology will set precedents and grounds for future international AI collaboration and governance. Such regulation efforts or lack thereof will also shape the kinds of weapons technologies that proliferate in the 21st century. On this episode of the AI Alignment Podcast, Paul Scharre joins us to discuss autonomous weapons, their potential benefits and risks, and the ongoing debate around the regulation of their development and use.

 Topics discussed in this episode include:

-What autonomous weapons are and how they may be used

-The debate around acceptable and unacceptable uses of autonomous weapons

-Degrees and kinds of ways of integrating human decision making in autonomous weapons 

-Risks and benefits of autonomous weapons

-Whether there is an arms race for autonomous weapons

-How autonomous weapons issues may matter for AI alignment and long-term AI safety

You can find the page for this podcast here: https://futureoflife.org/2020/03/16/on-lethal-autonomous-weapons-with-paul-scharre/

Timestamps: 

0:00 Intro

3:50 Why care about autonomous weapons?

4:31 What are autonomous weapons? 

06:47 What does “autonomy” mean? 

09:13 Will we see autonomous weapons in civilian contexts? 

11:29 How do we draw lines of acceptable and unacceptable uses of autonomous weapons? 

24:34 Defining and exploring human “in the loop,” “on the loop,” and “out of loop” 

31:14 The possibility of generating international lethal laws of robotics

36:15 Whether autonomous weapons will sanitize war and psychologically distance humans in detrimental ways

44:57 Are persons studying the psychological aspects of autonomous weapons use? 

47:05 Risks of the accidental escalation of war and conflict 

52:26 Is there an arms race for autonomous weapons? 

01:00:10 Further clarifying what autonomous weapons are

01:05:33 Does the successful regulation of autonomous weapons matter for long-term AI alignment considerations?

01:09:25 Does Paul see AI as an existential risk?

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