We need a new ethics for a world of AI agents . The deployment of capable AI agents raises fresh questions about safety, human-machine relationships and social coordination. Ar tificial intelligence (AI) developers are shifting their focus to building agents that can operate independently, with little human inter vention. To be an agent is to have the ability to perceive and act on an environment in a goal-directed and autonomous way. For example, a dig ital agent could be programmed to browse the web and make online purchases on behalf of a user -- comparing prices, selecting items and completing checkouts.

On Monday, the Pentagon announced the official adoption of a series of new principles for ethical use of artificial intelligence in warfare, the Associated Press reports. The principles were formed out of a commission with the (darkly Newspeak-y) name the Defense Innovation Board, which released its recommendations (title: "AI Principles: Recommendations on the Ethical Use of Artificial Intelligence by the Department of Defense") to the Pentagon last October. The board was fronted by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, an interesting twist given (as pointed out by the AP) due to the way Google seemed to (or: pretended to) drop out of a defense department project involving A.I. in 2018 after internal protests from Google staffers (to say nothing of the way Google's involvement was handled by the Pentagon). The Next Web called the principles "hazy" and "toothless." And Dave Gershgorn of OneZero noted that these supposed ethics are missing "'don't kill somebody with a robot.'"

Have you ever witnessed two people talking past each other? They seem to be discussing the same topic using the same language, but you begin to wonder if they are actually talking about two different things. The public debate about the use of artificial intelligence in the Department of Defense is beginning to feel that way to me. Some technologists have called for DoD AI ethics, but in the next breath they call for an end to programs that have never been demonstrated to be unethical. I recently completed a study examining ethics across all scientific disciplines, and my team identified 10 ethical principles that span disciplines and international borders.

Pablo Picasso once declared: "Computers are useless. They can only give you answers." The Spanish artist's joke may have been true of the 20th century, when computers were for the most part souped-up calculating machines performing clearly prescribed functions. But the expansion of computing power in the early 21st century means that computers are now posing some of the most testing questions of our times. And it is not clear who is responsible for providing the answers.