Damn, even the Pope thinks AI and autonomous weapons need reining in Pope Francis urged world leaders to establish an international treaty regulating AI, and warned against relying on machines to make moral and ethical decisions that should be left to humans. In a message ahead of annual World Peace Day – which is celebrated by Catholics on New Year's Day – His Holiness addressed the rise of AI …
"That positive outcome will only be achieved if we show ourselves capable of acting responsibly and respect such fundamental human values as 'inclusion, transparency, security, equity, privacy and reliability'."
And how's that worked out for various religions over the years then, your Holiness? There's a pot over here that wants a word with your kettle!
To be fair, they'lll probably be trained on a wider and better variety of source material than the average priest or cardinal is, and the humans controlling them will be less inclined to move them to new locations where they can carry on being bad when they misbehave terribly.
Given his history I'd suspect any comments from this pope are driven at least as much by his politics as by any theology. Which is good to a point, though South American socialism hardly has a glorious history behind it any more than the Church does.
As for the whole 'military development of autonomous weapons' thing... I've seen some of the efforts in this area and had the whole moral discussion. Ultimately even though people thing it's somehow different than old stuff it really isn't.
If I place a mine or a tripwire, I've left something that independently triggers to take lethal action - already potentially (eg an antiship mine) with a load of inbuilt processing to classify a target before deciding to kill it.
Or if I send off a drone to detect/target/kill, even if the mechanism isn't the same it's still an analogue of releasing a guided missile or activating an automated air defense; the human decision is deciding to activate/release the thing, and what happens after that is just the mechanics of it whether it's a simple heat tracker or a clever algorithm. Morally you've still built something with a degree of accuracy & lethality and you've sent it off, and using a particular flavour of AI (as opposed to all the signal processing and logic that already was used) really makes zero difference.
A weapon is a weapon and any degree of AI makes no odds as someone still decides to create and deploy the thing, and we've already had autonomous guided systems for decades without a human making every lethal decision. We already crossed that bridge.
Hand waving over AI is just a moral panic when the underlying morals haven't actually changed at all.
Hmmmm (indeed) ... we do regulate Cruise's killer robotaxis, and Tesla's killer autopilot (IIRC), and those killer factory robots that take us for vegetables and crush us to death ... we should probably get ready to regulate Boston Dynamics' cute little LLM-tethered museum tour guide killer robot dog as well I think (before it "accidentally" mauls small children on a school field trip for example). Granted that none of those devices were explicitly stated to have been designed to end human lives, but if those are regulated it makes sense (to me) that the more deadly ones should be as well.
To wit, in June of last year, this happened: "The United States [joined] the vast majority of countries around the world in committing to limit the use of anti-personnel landmines (APL)" ( https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2022/06/21/fact-sheet-changes-to-u-s-anti-personnel-landmine-policy/ ), which is very sensible.
... and warned against relying on machines to make moral and ethical decisions that should be left to humans.
Uh huh. Sure. Because the church has sooo much to say regarding "moral and ethical decisions", amirite?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_sexual_abuse_cases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_theology_of_sexuality#Contraception
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordination_of_women_and_the_Catholic_Church#2008_excommunication_order
This post has been deleted by its author
“ At that moment, two philosophers—Majikthise and Vroomfondel—break into the room and demand that the question be left to them. The Quest for Ultimate Truth is legally the right of working thinkers. Let Deep Thought answer the question and they will be right out of a job. They go so far as to threaten a national Philosophers' strike.”
Pope Francis urged world leaders to establish an international treaty regulating AI, and warned against relying on machines to make moral and ethical decisions that should be left to humans.
No one will every break an international treaty, we are saved!
I can not think of an international treaty someone has not bent or broken.
If we want international treaties to stand then they need someone with teeth to uphold it, No the UN does not count it has about as much teeth and about as much authority as a new born baby.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
