Stuart Russell, Professor of Computer Science at UC Berkeley, and Zachary Kallenborn, WMD and drone swarms expert, join us to discuss the highest risk and most destabilizing aspects of lethal autonomous weapons.

 Topics discussed in this episode include:

-The current state of the deployment and development of lethal autonomous weapons and swarm technologies

-Drone swarms as a potential weapon of mass destruction

-The risks of escalation, unpredictability, and proliferation with regards to autonomous weapons

-The difficulty of attribution, verification, and accountability with autonomous weapons

-Autonomous weapons governance as norm setting for global AI issues

You can find the page for this podcast here: https://futureoflife.org/2021/02/25/stuart-russell-and-zachary-kallenborn-on-drone-swarms-and-the-riskiest-aspects-of-lethal-autonomous-weapons/

You can check out the new lethal autonomous weapons website here: https://autonomousweapons.org/

Have any feedback about the podcast? You can share your thoughts here: www.surveymonkey.com/r/DRBFZCT

Timestamps: 

0:00 Intro

2:23 Emilia Javorsky on lethal autonomous weapons

7:27 What is a lethal autonomous weapon?

11:33 Autonomous weapons that exist today

16:57 The concerns of collateral damage, accidental escalation, scalability, control, and error risk

26:57 The proliferation risk of autonomous weapons

32:30 To what extent are global superpowers pursuing these weapons? What is the state of industry's pursuit of the research and manufacturing of this technology

42:13 A possible proposal for a selective ban on small anti-personnel autonomous weapons

47:20 Lethal autonomous weapons as a potential weapon of mass destruction

53:49 The unpredictability of autonomous weapons, especially when swarms are interacting with other swarms

58:09 The risk of autonomous weapons escalating conflicts

01:10:50 The risk of drone swarms proliferating

01:20:16 The risk of assassination

01:23:25 The difficulty of attribution and accountability

01:26:05 The governance of autonomous weapons being relevant to the global governance of AI

01:30:11 The importance of verification for responsibility, accountability, and regulation

01:35:50 Concerns about the beginning of an arms race and the need for regulation

01:38:46 Wrapping up

01:39:23 Outro

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