Tag: perpetual war

The Threat Of “Killer Robots” Is Real And Closer Than You Might Think

From self-driving cars, to digital assistants, artificial intelligence (AI) is fast becoming an integral technology in our lives today. But this same technology that can help to make our day-to-day life easier is also being incorporated into weapons for use in combat situations.

Weaponised AI features heavily in the security strategies of the US, China and Russia. And some existing weapons systems already include autonomous capabilities based on AI, developing weaponised AI further means machines could potentially make decisions to harm and kill people based on their programming, without human intervention.

Countries that back the use of AI weapons claim it allows them to respond to emerging threats at greater than human speed. They also say it reduces the risk to military personnel and increases the ability to hit targets with greater precision. But outsourcing use-of-force decisions to machines violates human dignity. And it’s also incompatible with international law which requires human judgement in context.

Indeed, the role that humans should play in use of force decisions has been an increased area of focus in many United Nations (UN) meetings. And at a recent UN meeting, states agreed that it’s unacceptable on ethical and legal grounds to delegate use-of-force decisions to machines – “without any human control whatsoever”.

But while this may sound like good news, there continues to be major differences in how states define “human control”.

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Trump appears to threaten aliens with ‘military the likes of which we’ve never had before’

Donald Trump did not deny media reporting that the US Department of Defense has set up a task force to examine “unidentified alien phenomena” after the Air Force released a video earlier this year showing pilots flying by what many people have speculated was a UFO.

“Can you explain why the Department of Defense has set up a UFO task force?” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo asked Mr Trump in an interview on Sunday.

“Are there UFOs?” she asked.

“Well, I’m going to have to check on that. I mean, I’ve heard that. I heard that two days ago. So I’ll check on that. I’ll take a good, strong look at that,” Mr Trump said.

He then quickly segued into a boast about US military might, which some people on Twitter took to be the president threatening aliens with human weaponry.

“I will tell you this, we now have created a military the likes of which we’ve never had before, in terms of equipment. The equipment that we have, the weapons that we have, and hopefully — hope to god we never have to use them,” Mr Trump said.

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SPACEX IS BUILDING A MILITARY ROCKET TO SHIP WEAPONS ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD

SpaceX and the Pentagon just signed a contract to jointly develop a new rocket that can launch into space and deliver up to 80 tons of cargo and weaponry anywhere in the world — in just one hour.

Tests on the rocket are expected to begin as early as next year, Business Insider reports. It’s expected to shuttle weapons around the world 15 times faster than existing aircraft, like the US C-17 Globemaster.

“Think about moving the equivalent of a C-17 payload anywhere on the globe in less than an hour,” General Stephen Lyons, head of US Transportation Command said at a Wednesday conference.

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