BFF-08 Pentagon adopts ‘ethical principles’ for artificial intelligence use

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US-MILITARY-DEFENSE

Pentagon adopts ‘ethical principles’ for artificial intelligence use

WASHINGTON, Feb 25, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – The Pentagon announced Monday it has
adopted “ethical principles” for the use of artificial intelligence by the
armed forces, a measure aimed at convincing US tech giants to collaborate
with the military.

“AI technology will change much about the battlefield of the future, but
nothing will change America’s steadfast commitment to responsible and lawful
behavior,” Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said in a statement.

The Pentagon, which regularly criticizes the use of facial recognition
technology by police in China, has pledged to establish “explicit, well-
defined uses” for AI technology, according to the statement.

Such technology, which learns through experience the skills necessary to
complete its assigned tasks, will also be “reliable” and have transparent
systems of use, the Pentagon statement said.

As a result, AI technology will be “governable”: the military will have
“the ability to disengage or deactivate deployed systems that demonstrate
unintended behavior.”

The question of AI weapons has been a controversial one in the Pentagon,
where the basic principle was that human beings had to stay in the loop — a
formula that implies the machine itself cannot make the decision about
whether to shoot at a target.

Such principles, which remained vague in the absence of AI-equipped
weapons, were defined after 15 months of consultations with representatives
of US technology giants, major universities and the administration. The
discussions were led by Eric Schmidt, the former executive chairman of
Google.

Under pressure from its employees, Google in 2018 declined to renew a
Pentagon contract called Project Maven, which used machine learning to
distinguish people and objects in drone videos.

“If we had had the AI ethics principles three years ago (when launching
Maven), and we were transparent about what we were trying to do and why we
were trying to do it, maybe we would have had a different outcome,”
Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, the director of the Pentagon’s Joint
Artificial Intelligence Center, told reporters when explaining the new AI
principles.

BSS/AFP/FI/ 0824 hrs