Weaponising Artificial Intelligence is a bad idea: Expert

Manama : Weaponising Artificial Intelligence (AI) may not be a good idea because of the many limitations that it has, said ethicist and technology expert Wendell Wallach.

There needs to be a new ethical principle stating that machines should not be given the chance to make life or death decision in regards to humans, Wendell Wallach said in a keynote speech during the final day of the  Innovation Forum held at the Four Season Hotel Bahrain Bay yesterday. 

He said that weaponising AI is a “really bad idea” because it lacks the intelligence to make crucial decisions.

 He said that technology is a “great servant but a dangerous master.”

 “Consider a nuclear powered submarine that is unmanned, largely there to inspect what is there from other countries. But also to fight other nuclear powered submarines that are unmanned. Do we want to give this machine this sort of capability? Understand that lethal autonomy is not a weapon system, it is a feature set that can be added to any weapon system. If there are robots carrying machine guns on the battle fields, soldiers wont have chance against such technology,” he said during his speech.

Wallach. said that wars would increase if AI is given such power.

 “It is not just about killing individual combatants, these technologies can actually start new warfare unintentionally or could escalate warfare unintentionally,” he said, adding, “There will be lower barriers for politicians to start wars because they will have the illusion that they could go to war without losing soldiers.”

“I understand how important security is to every nation in the world but this is not a pathway we want to go down because this path means we could lose control overtime. That’s my great concern here, we delegate responsibility to machines and they make the decisions which they do not have the intelligence to make,” Wallach added.  

The innovation forum saw the  participation of over 500 entrepreneurs, investors, and researchers, along with senior officials from the world’s leading tech companies as well as policy makers. It was organized by the MIT Enterprise Forum Pan Arab, in partnership with Bahrain Economic Development Board (EDB) and Investcorp.