The Pentagon has said AI will help the US military become even more powerful. On Thursday, an advisory group that included executives from Google, Microsoft and Facebook proposed guidelines to prevent military AI from going off track.
The advice comes from the Defense and Innovation Commission, which was created under the Barack Obama administration. Last year, the department asked the group to develop ethical principles for AI projects. On Thursday, the group released a set of proposed principles in a report that praises the power of military AI while also warning about unintended harm or conflict.
The Pentagon has said it is a national priority to rapidly expand the use of AI everywhere, from the battlefield to the back office. An updated National Defense Strategy released last year says AI is needed to stay ahead of adversaries that rely on new technologies to compete with American power, such as China and Russia.
The Committee sets out five ethical principles:
The first is that people must remain accountable for the development, use, and outcomes of the department's AI systems.
Other principles on the list describe practices that one might hope are already standard for any Pentagon technology project.
The remaining authorities say the department should take steps to avoid bias in AI systems that could unintentionally harm people, and that the Pentagon should be able to detect unintentional harm and automatically disconnect if it occurs or allow for a human to disable it.
The recommendations underscore how AI is now seen as important to the future of warfare and other Pentagon operations — but also how the technology still relies on human judgment and restraint. The recent enthusiasm for AI is largely due to advances in machine learning.
Although the Pentagon has asked the Defense and Innovation to develop AI principles, it is not committed to adopting them.
The relationship has been strained by employee protests over the Pentagon's work at companies like Google and Microsoft. Google decided not to renew the Maven contract and instead released its own AI principles after thousands of employees protested its existence.
The Pentagon’s AI ethics principles could help executives sell potentially controversial projects internally. However, Microsoft and Google have made it clear that they intend to remain committed to the US military, and both have executives on the Defense and Innovation Committee.
