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Army of None

Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
Paul Scharre, a Pentagon defense expert and former U.S. Army Ranger, explores what it would mean to give machines authority over the ultimate decision of life or death.
Scharre's far-ranging investigation examines the emergence of autonomous weapons, the movement to ban them, and the legal and ethical issues surrounding their use. He spotlights artificial intelligence in military technology, spanning decades of innovation from German noise-seeking Wren torpedoes in World War II—antecedents of today's homing missiles—to autonomous cyber weapons, submarine-hunting robot ships, and robot tank armies.

Through interviews with defense experts, ethicists, psychologists, and activists, Scharre surveys what challenges might face "centaur warfighters" on future battlefields, which will combine human and machine cognition. We've made tremendous technological progress in the past few decades, but we have also glimpsed the terrifying mishaps that can result from complex automated systems—such as when advanced F-twenty-two fighter jets experienced a computer meltdown the first time they flew over the International Date Line.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      March 19, 2018
      This important book illuminates what may be a fundamental change in the nature of war: the possibility of a future in which the majority of the fighting is done by autonomous weapons powered by artificial intelligence. Unlike drones, these machines make lethal decisions without a human “in the loop.” Scharre is an expert in the field, having served as a DoD analyst responsible for the U.S. policy regarding autonomous weapon systems (“Spoiler alert: it doesn’t ban them”). He talks to other experts, witnesses demonstrations, and analyzes historical examples to inform this exploration of current weapons (such as the capabilities of the Aegis ballistic missile defense system, which can rapidly shoot down ballistic missiles) and the ethical challenges surrounding autonomous weapons, including reliance on fallible tools (such as those of the Patriot air defense systems, which caused friendly fire incidents among U.S. aircraft in Iraq) and the likelihood of an arms race spurring investment in ethically questionable technology. This excellent primer is of interest to the general reader and a must-read for those who have a professional interest in military topics but are not up to speed on AI and robotics.

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  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

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  • English

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