A new report by Dutch NGO Pax suggests that Microsoft, Amazon and various other major tech companies may be putting the world at risk by developing or planning to develop autonomous weapons.
The study scrutinized 50 major tech companies to see if they were involved in military artificial intelligence (AI) projects; if they were developing technology that could be used to create autonomous weapons; or if they had distanced themselves from such protects. The AI activities of 21 companies including Amazon and Microsoft were rated as “high concern,” while another 22 firms fell in the “medium concern” category.
Stuart Russell, a computer science professor at the University of California, Berkeley recently warned that “autonomous weapons will inevitably become scalable weapons of mass destruction, because if the human is not in the loop, then a single person can launch a million weapons or a hundred million weapons.”
Read more: Amazon, Microsoft, May be Putting World at Risk of Killer AI, Says Report
This topic of AI in national security and war is one we have reported on extensively at OODAloop, including reporting on what business leaders should know about these critical topics. For recent reporting see:
- AI Security: Four Things to Focus on Right Now
- A Decision-Maker’s Guide to Artificial Intelligence
- When Artificial Intelligence Goes Wrong
- Artificial Intelligence for Business Advantage
- The Future of AI Policy is Largely Unwritten
- AI Will Test American Values In The Battlefield
And for more OODA member network resources see: OODA Member Resources.
