Anthropic, the Pentagon, and the Future of Autonomous Weapons

SPEAKER_2 (0:02)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

Joe Weisenthal (0:18)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:23)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:24)

So Tracy, we're recording this March 24th, and of course, almost all of our episodes lately have been about the war in Iran. But what's interesting or what's a little weird is that just prior to the war, literally days or maybe hours, the biggest story in the world was actually about defense and the DOD.

Tracy Alloway (0:44)

That's right. So you are referring to Anthropic.

Joe Weisenthal (0:47)

Yeah.

Tracy Alloway (0:47)

And it's disagreement, to put it mildly, with the Department of War.

Joe Weisenthal (0:51)

Yeah, exactly. This was the biggest story going right up on the eve of the war in Iran. And of course, obviously there was this contract and Anthropics technology was used by the Defense Department. So it was not a disagreement about the use of AI per se in war, but the question of the degree to which AI could be used for autonomous weapons systems on their own without a human in the loop.

Tracy Alloway (1:15)

And surveillance, that was also part of that.

Joe Weisenthal (1:17)

And surveillance, this was another key element.

Tracy Alloway (1:18)

But you're right. So we've heard this expression, autonomous weapons, pop up more and more, especially in recent days. And I have a lot of questions over what exactly that means, because my impression is the US military certainly has been using AI for some time. And so we're really talking about degrees here of autonomy. And so if you think about an autonomous weapon, I think your mind could go fully terminator. And there's like a murder robot out there that's making its own decisions on which people or places to target. And then you get levels below that, right? Where AI is kind of helping humans to come up with strategic decisions.

Joe Weisenthal (2:00)

Right. So if there is a missile coming and you have a missile defense system, I don't think you want a human in the loop is like, okay, here are the coordinates XYZ that we think it's going to hit. At this point in time, we think the missile will be here. Are you cool with firing it? I think everyone's probably okay with that level of autonomy. But I have a feeling that to your point exactly, a lot of this discussion and maybe it's core to what Anthropic and the Department of Defense were disagreeing on. I have a feeling a lot of this is going to come down to definitions. My guess is that there is not one shared agreement of this is an autonomous weapon system and this one is not.

Tracy Alloway (2:39)

Absolutely. Of course, there are also questions over exactly how places like the Department of Defense, not only how they define it, but once they have those definitions, whether or not certain companies trust them, to stick to those policies because the US will say, well, our policy is not to survey our citizens at the moment. If you're Anthropic, you don't need to worry about that. Clearly, Anthropic feels otherwise or say they do. So there are all these really interesting thematic questions that pop up from all of this.

Joe Weisenthal (3:12)

Totally. And then there's the question of, okay, here is a technology and the government says, we believe that we can use this to make the country safer. What, you're not going to let us do it? Like private corporation, there's some very interesting questions about the role of corporate power vis-a-vis the government and so forth. Anyway, this is something that has become even more timely in the reports, even in the early days of the Iran War, about these AI systems having been used, perhaps, in target selection. But we don't really know. None of the reporting is like that clear. I don't think that they're going out and advertising the strike.

Tracy Alloway (3:44)

This is exactly how we're using AI.

Joe Weisenthal (3:46)

This is exactly how we're using AI and so forth. But this is obviously a huge debate, and war aside, it's only going to grow, and just as AI is going to grow, it seems, in so many different areas. Anyway, I'm really excited to say, we really do have the perfect guest, someone who's been writing and thinking about this stuff for a long time. When we talk to an AI expert, I mark the dividing line. It's like, were you talking about AI prior to when Chad GPT was released? It's like, I take a little bit more seriously the people who are in this space prior to November 2022 Anyway, I'm very excited to say, we're going to be speaking with Paul Scharre. He's the Executive Vice President at the Center for a New American Security, and he's the author of two books related to this. One is the most recent, Four Battlegrounds, Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence, and then prior to that, he is the author of Army of None, Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. He was previously in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, also a previous Army Ranger, so truly the perfect guest. So Paul, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.