The Pentagon has committed to combating bias in artificial intelligence but may not be asking the right questions of industry partners to be successful. AI has become a bedrock of 21st century military strategy, and the Defense Department argues that machine learning is integral to the U.S. military's competitive edge. But traditional AI models are "brittle" and "not ready for deployment," Nisheeth Vishnoi, a Yale professor of computer science, said. Wrong results on the battlefield include incorrect identification of human and environmental targets. The department has spent billions of dollars on AI development, including establishment of a Joint Artificial Intelligence ...

Cutting-edge military artificial intelligence that may soon be deployed to battlefields should be equipped with an emergency switch to shut it down, a board of experts headed by former Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the Pentagon. Emergency shutdown could protect against the AI systems causing harm or acting in unexpected and potentially dangerous ways, according to the Defense Innovation Board. After months of work, the board on Thursday proposed a landmark set of ethical guidelines for military use of artificial intelligence. The recommendations to Defense Secretary Mark Esper also call for systems ultimately to be controlled by humans and free...