Killer robots are here. Now what? (feat. Peter Asaro)
From Lock and Code by Malwarebytes
April 5, 2026 · 43 min · Season 7 · Episode 7
About this episode
The episode discusses the implications of using AI in military applications, particularly focusing on the ethical concerns surrounding autonomous weapons.
Big news : Lock and Code is nominated for a Webby Award! You can help us win the People’s Voice Award by voting here . --- We have to talk about killer robots. No, not the Terminator, and not some Boston Dynamics robot run amok . We have to talk instead about a technological reality that is very much already here. In late February, the artificial intelligence developer Anthropic made a perhaps surprising statement for those who are only familiar with its helpful chatbot tool Claude: The company would not allow the government to use its technology to kill people without proper safety controls. Hold on… what? Despite Anthropic’s reputation amongst most everyday people as the creator of a collaborative AI-powered assistant for coding, writing, and searching, the company had already deployed Claude across the US government for strategic military needs. According to Anthropic, Claude was used by the US Department of Defense and other national security agencies for “mission-critical applications, such as intelligence analysis, modeling and simulation, operational planning, cyber operations, and more.” But behind the scenes, the US government was asking for even more…
People in this episode
Host: Malwarebytes
Guest: Peter Asaro
Topics covered
- artificial intelligence
- military technology
- autonomous weapons
- government regulation
- ethics in technology
Keywords
- killer robots
- AI ethics
- military applications
- Anthropic
- autonomous weapons
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Anthropic, US Department of Defense
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