Artificial Intelligence Moving to Battlefield as Ethics Weighed

The Pentagon, taking the next big step of deploying artificial intelligence to aid troops and help select battlefield targets, must settle lingering ethical concerns about using the technology for waging war.

Search giant Google dealt a blow last year to the military’s maiden artificial intelligence, or AI, program sorting drone footage. Thousands of employees protested working on surveillance technology they said eventually could be used to kill.

The Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center is pushing ahead with a new series of AI projects that will be rolled out to commanders over the coming year with an expected funding boost from Congress. It’s part of the U.S. race for military artificial intelligence supremacy over China and Russia. At the same time, a defense board is hammering out ethical guidelines for the cutting-edge technology.

Read the full story and more in Bloomberg Government.