Regina Surber, Scientific Advisor ICT4Peace and ZHET participated at the panel “Hype vs. Reality of Autonomous Weapons Systems” which took place on January 28, 2019 at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland.
The three main points that Regina presented were:
> Debates about probabilities of potential future scenarios should stop, because by this, we lose time. Everyone understands, that government and businesses are in need of clear forecasts in order to set their parameters to adapt to the change caused by AI. However, no one knows with certainty what is going to be developed in the future as there are only few reliable outlooks.
> It is important to admit that we do not know whether AI will, e.g., at some point surpass human intelligence, or if AI creates massive job loss, or, on the contrary, creates more jobs in total. Therefore we should discuss all potential scenarios to be prepared for all of them.
> In regards to autonomous weapons systems, she emphasized the fact that when speaking of the currently existing highly automated weapons systems, we are always at least one step behind because newest developments most often take place behind closed doors in military research facilities.
If you wish to read more about what Regina presented at the panel, please download her preparation notes here.