Regina Surber, Advisor to the ICT4Peace Foundation and the Zurich Hub for Ethics and technology (ZHET), gave a lecture on Autonomous Intelligent Software Agents, LAWS and Peace-Time Threats on 16 January 2017 at the SwissCognitive Tank hosted by Ringier, Zurich.
The focus of the presentation was on the international legal and policy debate on Lethal Autonomous Weapons (LAWS) at the United Nations which presently does not include issues such as the use of LAWS during law enforcement operations, autonomous cyber weapons, and links between different kinds of new technologies, e.g. Artificial Intelligence and biotechnology. Whereas the peace and security implications of weaponized autonomous intelligent software agents are more numerous than currently discussed by the international community, those software agents also pose risks for global society and humanity, even if they are not weaponized. Those risks are subtle, systemic, by now not yet fully addressed by the United Nations, and range from autonomously generated disinformation to criminal profiling through algorithms, to the potential use of autonomous intelligent software agents to keep society in quantitative borders during times of crises. This leads to the urgent recommendation to generate a more holistic understanding of all the peace and security implications of autonomous technology in general and new technologies (also Life Sciences, Biotechnology, Synthetic Biology) in particular, as well as the recommendation to develop a comprehensive position by the international community and the UN on these risks. To that end an urgent and increased engagement by all stake-holders including Governments, industry, academia and civil society is required.
On 13 November 2017 Regina Surber held a lecture on the same topic at ETH.
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