July 29, 2016
Who’ll want artificially intelligent weapons? ISIS, democracies, or autocracies?
One of the biggest fears about the nexus of artificial intelligence and the military is that machine learning—a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to learn from new data without being explicitly programmed—could spread rapidly in military systems, and even risk an arms race. And the alarm over the consequences of robots armed with weapons even extended to the recent use of a remotely piloted, rather than autonomous, bomb disposal robot retrofitted with an explosive by the Dallas Police Department in July 2016. That event triggered a wave of articles about the consequences of robots with weapons, especially when used outside the military.
Discussions of the military applications of robotics have tended to focus on the United States, largely because of America’s extensive use of uninhabited (also called unmanned) aerial vehicles, or “drones,” to conduct surveillance and launch lethal strikes against suspected militants around the world. Yet limiting the discussion of military robotics to those developed by wealthy, democratic countries such as the United States may miss important underlying trends.
Read the full article on the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
More from CNAS
-
Energy, Economics & Security / Technology & National Security
Beyond Bans: Expanding the Policy Options for Tech-Security ThreatsStuck between a rock (the fact that banning all Chinese tech that poses a risk is expensive and impractical) and a hard place (the fact that many existing mitigation proposals...
By Geoffrey Gertz
-
Indo-Pacific Security / Technology & National Security
Cyber Crossroads in the Indo-PacificThe Indo-Pacific faces a cyber crossroads. Down one path lies deeper military, intelligence, and economic ties between Washington and its key allies and partners in this strat...
By Vivek Chilukuri, Lisa Curtis, Janet Egan, Morgan Peirce, Elizabeth Whatcott & Nathaniel Schochet
-
Technology & National Security
Securing America’s AI Future: Federal Research and Development PrioritiesOn April 29, 2025, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a Request for Information on the Development of a 2025 National Artificial Intelligenc...
By Caleb Withers & Spencer Michaels
-
Middle East Security / Technology & National Security
‘We Want Peace’: How Attacks Between Israel and Iran Could Impact People in NCRetired Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan is an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for New American Security. Shanahan provided some context on how the two Middle East countries got her...
By Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan