Lethal autonomous weapon

Yes, we had a lovely chat with Professor Walsh and kind of talked about as well, you know, if you look at Yanis Varoufakis' theory of techno-feudalism, data centers, the new means of production, the new machines to the 21st century as kind of the factory or the machines were to the 20th century.

A quick note before we roll over to our interview with Toby, I was just going to say there's a little, because there's more chatter at the moment, obviously, about autonomous weapons and the use of AI in war.

If anyone is interested, you can go back way into the archives.

It's Patreon episode 19 from nearly three years ago where we spoke to one of our most Perhaps our cleverest and most beautiful guest ever on this podcast.

She is an expert in killer robots.

Yeah.

Autonomous weapons.

So if anyone's interested in going back and listening to that, I'm sure a lot of things might have changed, but it's a useful backgrounder on what she was working on.

You know, the UN is actually working on this.

It's called LAWS, Lethal Autonomous Weapons System.

So there are going to be broad treaties around this.

And I guess we're going to try to get people to some consensus around, yeah, just maybe we can all agree to not create killer robots.

And ones that went to Israel to the safe haven, supposedly, are some of the most obstreperous and some of the vilest people in the state.

Well, what do you think is the scenario here in terms of autonomous weapons? You have a lot to say about the Russian-Ukraine war.

And Ukraine has responded with amazing innovation with drones.

And just a few days ago, the first artificial intelligence-driven drone killed three people in Ukraine.

So it is a big issue.

And I'm looking forward to sort of listening to what you guys discuss about it.

Well, the most perilous immediate issue with AI are autonomous weapons.

And just a few days ago, the Russians humanly directed a drone in an area in Ukraine and then allowed the artificial intelligence software to choose the target, and they killed three Ukrainians.

So a few background points.

One is when the Ukrainians use highly autonomous weapons and we don't know them to be using fully autonomous targeting, which was what this was, but we do know that they're doing stuff that's pretty close to it and they're attempting.

Let's just say they're not morally above using a highly autonomous system.

When They do it.

And so the capacity for Russian civilian death, if something goes wrong, is extremely minimal, at least if you're dealing with the front lines or the middle strike.

Conversely, any time Russians are targeting Ukrainians, they are also operating on Ukrainian territory, and there are Ukrainian civilians.

And so my first problem with this is not an autonomous weapons problem.

It's a... broader Russian policy in Ukraine, which is that they are insufficiently attentive to protecting human life, civilian life, collateral injury, and sometimes are actively targeting civilians.

He said the mRNA molecules in the COVID vaccine might better recognize tumors because they are believed to sensitize a patient's immune system.

In, in world news, the United Nations and the Red Cross have issued a joint warning that the world is dangerously close to fully auto-autonomous weapons killing humans.

The UN Secretary General and ICRC President called for urgent international regulation as drone warfare grows in sophistication.

This week, the New York Times reported that an AI chip-powered Russian drone, which killed three people in Ukraine last month, had chosen its precise target independently after its initial launch by a human operator.