Pentagon Hosts Meeting on Ethical Use of Military AI With Allies and Partners

Last week, on September 15 and 16, the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC) held a meeting with officials from 13 countries, including but not only U.S. allies, around the ethical military uses of artificial intelligence, the first of its kind. Breaking Defense quotes Mark Beall, the JAIC's head of strategy and policy, who called the meeting "historic," as saying, "This group of … countries, to my knowledge, has never been brought together under one banner before." Earlier this year, the Pentagon adopted a set of ethics guidelines around AI use. At a time when China and Russia's pursuit of military AI has raised considerable alarm in Western capitals, Beall noted that the meeting was not about creating a coalition against specific countries. Rather, "we're really focused on, right now, rallying around [shared] core values like digital liberty and human rights… international humanitarian law," Beall said.