Here Comes Terminator: Former Joint Chiefs Chairman Predicts U.S. Military Will be Armed With Robots
Retired U.S. Army General Mark Milley predicts that robots and autonomous systems could comprise up to one-third of the U.S. military by 2039, potentially operated and commanded by artificial intelligence (AI).
“Ten to fifteen years from now, my guess is a third, maybe 25% to a third of the U.S. military will be robotic,” retired U.S. Army general Mark Milley explained earlier this month at an Axios event to launch the outlet’s “Future of Defense” newsletter.
These wouldn’t be remotely controlled systems, like most of today’s unmanned aerial systems, but rather robotic platforms that could be controlled and even directly commanded by artificial intelligence (AI) systems. However, Milley acknowledged that technology doesn’t have any mortality. For that reason, current U.S. policy still stipulates that a human operator is in control when it comes to the use of lethal munitions and that it requires a human to maintain the “ethical framework” for any decisionmaking.
Of course, Milley further explained that as AI development advances, there could be a situation where AI is allowed to determine when to engage with an enemy.
“You can imagine a future from a technical st