Michael Horowitz, UPenn: Governing AI That's Designed to Kill

About this episode

Michael Horowitz discusses the complexities of governing military AI and the ethical challenges it presents.

How AI is, could, and shouldn't be used in military and other national security contexts is a topic of growing importance. Recent conflicts on the battlefield, and between the U.S. military and a major AI lab, are forcing conversations about legal, ethical, and appropriate business limitations for increasingly powerful AI tools. Michael Horowitz, a Political Science professor and Director of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania, is one of the world's leading experts on military AI and autonomous weapons. In this episode, drawing on his two stints in the U.S. Department of Defense, Horowitz walks through the major buckets of military AI use. He explains why militaries are, in some ways, more incentivized than any other institution to get AI governance right, but genuine tensions among speed, effectiveness, and meaningful human control can make responsible military AI difficult in practice. We cover Anthropic's recent dispute with the Pentagon as a case study in the fragile and increasingly consequential relationship between Silicon Valley and the defense establishment. Michael C. Horowitz is the Richard Perry Professor of Political Science and Director of Perry…

People in this episode

Host: Kevin Werbach

Guest: Michael Horowitz

Topics covered

• military AI
• autonomous weapons
• AI governance
• national security
• ethical implications of AI
• Silicon Valley and defense

Keywords

• AI in military
• autonomous systems
• ethical AI
• military technology
• AI governance
• national security
• Silicon Valley
• defense technology

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: University of Pennsylvania, U.S. Department of Defense, Anthropic, Council on Foreign Relations

Places: U.S.

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