BREAKING NEWS: A BATTLE is running right now between the US Department of War and defenders of top AI firm Anthropic on a terrifying plan to create an army of autonomous killer robots.
Two hours ago, Secretary for War Pete Hegseth issued a statement blasting the company and ordering all government-linked departments to cancel contracts with it.
But one hour ago, one of the world’s top scientists, Max Tegmark, called on all AI companies to join Anthropic’s efforts to stop the Pentagon developing fully autonomous killing machines.
Ultimate power must rest with Donald Trump, Hegseth said: “As President Trump stated on Truth Social, the Commander-in-Chief and the American people alone will determine the destiny of our armed forces, not unelected tech executives.”
But Tegmark, founder of the Future of Life Institute, commended the hold-outs “for standing up for the principle that AI should never be used to kill people without meaningful human control”. Anthropic has also resisted Hegseth’s demands for AI help on surveillance.
Social media responses suggest that many US citizens are unhappy about the direction being taken, pointing out that a government focused on surveillance and autonomous killing is like Skynet from the Terminator movies.
A former US Navy officer, Keith E Hermansader, summarized Hegseth’s plans on X: “Spy on every American citizen, and then send armed AI drones out to eliminate anybody who speaks out in criticism of this regime.”
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CHINA OPPOSES, FOUR COUNTRIES IN FAVOR
The US has been working on the mechanics of lethal “Terminator bots” for years, but want AI processing power to give them the ability to decide for themselves when to kill humans.
The Pentagon has long been using the arguments that China is already doing it—despite the fact that China is on the record as having strongly opposed the development of killer robots. In 2019, China and the majority of other countries of the world met at the UN to discuss a motion which said that the granting of power to machines to kill humans was a horrific idea which should be banned globally.
The idea of prohibiting the development of killer robots was widely supported across the UN by China and others. Only four nations disagreed with the motion that autonomous killers should be banned: The US, the UK, Russia and Australia.