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Curious Cases

Rutherford and Fry on Living with AI: AI in Warfare

Curious Cases

BBC

Technology, Science

4.84.1K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2021

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What if a despotic leader could programme a swarm of drones to kill a set of identified targets with just the push of a button? Due to ever expanding AI capabilities this extreme dystopian vision may not be technically unfeasible. In this second of a four part series responding to this year's BBC Reith lectures from Stuart Russell, Adam Rutherford and Hannah Fry unpick the role of AI in warfare. Joining them to help them navigate the battlefield of information is Ulrike Franke, a senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations who specialises in the future of warfare. Together they will be investigating 'lethal autonomous weapons' - these are weapons that can find, chose and kill human targets without human supervision. We will be discussing how advanced this technology actually is - some think the world may have already experienced the first ever autonomous strike in Libya. What are the repercussions of this technology for safety on the battlefield , and what are the wider geo-political ramifications? Stuart Russell has deep concerns over the development of these types of weapons and Rutherford and Fry pick apart some of the ethical debates this technology raises. Who would be responsible if a system malfunctioned and killed a civilian? What's to stop it getting into the wrong hands? Should we even be creating these weapons in the first place - do we instead need a convention banning them? And is that even possible?

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, I'm Adam Rutherford.

0:03.6

And I'm Hannah Frye, and in this special series of him and me,

0:07.4

we're going to be tackling one of the biggest scientific and cultural ideas of our age,

0:11.9

artificial intelligence.

0:13.7

Yes, AI is the subject of the Reflectures delivered this year by Stuart Russell,

0:18.1

professor of Computer Science at the University of California,

0:20.6

and founder of the Centre for Human Compatible Artificial Intelligence.

0:24.8

For each of the lectures, we're going to be taking his theme and getting stuck into the source code.

0:29.9

And today we are deep behind enemy lines,

0:32.4

embedded into one of the most emotive and consequential aspects of AI.

0:37.3

That is, it's role in modern warfare.

0:39.7

Yeah, now war and conflict are often hugely significant drivers of technological innovation,

0:44.7

arms races to develop better communications, cryptography, security,

0:49.2

and let's not be around the bush here, more efficient ways to kill people.

0:53.7

But as the era of AI takes hold,

0:56.2

we are at the dawn of a new kind of warfare,

0:58.8

one which involves lethal or tonnumous weapons,

1:01.7

weapons that locate, select, and engage human targets without human supervision.

1:07.1

And by engage, you mean kill.

1:09.5

Yes, kill.

1:10.4

Okay, good to know that you from this is up front.

1:12.8

So these are all fairly terrifying words and concepts,

...

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