Democrats Want a Military AI Restriction Law Following Anthropic’s Pentagon Fallout

Source Domain: gizmodo.com

Democrats in Congress are pushing to pass bills that would limit the Department of Defense’s use of artificial intelligence.

This week, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff from California unveiled the Human Authority in Lethal Operations (HALO) Act, a bill that would require a human commander to have the final say on any course of action taken by autonomous weapon systems. The bill would also mandate detailed record-taking of how military decisions were made and targets were selected for later review, establish protections for whistleblowers, and prohibit the use of AI in some cases involving nuclear weapons and mass surveillance.

“The past few months have shown us that there is an urgent need for commonsense guardrails to ensure the Defense Department’s use of AI is in line with Americans’ national security and privacy priorities,” Senator Schiff said in the press release. “My legislation would protect Americans from unlawful domestic surveillance, ensure that humans in the chain of command exercise responsibility for the use of any lethal technology, and maintain strong ethical protections in the deployment of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons.”

Artificial intelligence has been a part of warfare for some time now. Militaries around the world employ the help of AI systems for target selection in strikes and mass surveillance, one prominent example being the use of AI by the Israeli army against Palestinians. The United States has also long deployed artificial intelligence in military operations, including in its latest war against Iran.

But earlier this year, the use of AI in the military was catapulted to the top of public discourse when an existing deal between the Pentagon and Anthropic fell through, and in an unprecedented move, the AI giant was designated a supply chain risk. Anthropic had allegedly refused to get rid of guardrails in its AI systems that were meant to prevent the DoD from using its models for mass domestic…

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