Artificial Intelligence: Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems and Peace Time Threats

Abstract

Panel Discussion: We are on the verge of one of the greatest paradigm shifts in human history. Research on Artificial Intelligence is enabling humanity to create autonomous intelligent software agents that can currently perform and learn new tasks without human guidance, observation or intervention, supplanting humans in decision making processes. This is already the case for military weapons platforms know as Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) that can kill and destroy a target without human intervention. There are however also a plethora of peace time uses and risks of autonomous agents including potential mass disinformation, criminal profiling and the potential management of population amid resource scarcity to name a few.