Ethical Terminators, or how DoD learned to stop worrying and love AI: 2023 Year in Review
WASHINGTON — When pundits talk about military use of artificial intelligence, the phrase “human in the loop” is almost certain to come up. But a “human in the loop” isn’t defined in the official Pentagon policy, even after the policy was revised and expanded in January, nor in the months of internal refinement and international talks that followed.
Still in 2023 — the year ChatGPT rocketed AI into the international spotlight — the US government make a full-court push to define “responsible” military use of the technology on its own terms, and sell that concept to both the American public and world opinion.
The Pentagon wants to keep its options open, in part, because many systems already in use have had a fully automated option, which takes the human out of the loop, for decades — like the Army’s Patriot, the Navy’s Aegis and similar missile defenses in service around the world. It may also be because the US military has no desire to unilaterally disarm itself if a highly automated system proves lethally superior, at least in some scenarios, to one slowed down by a human decision-maker — as years of simulations and experiments with AI-controlled fighter jets already suggest.
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