"In the end then, the silence of the AI Ethics movement towards its burgeoning use in the military is unsurprising. The movement doesn’t say anything controversial to Washington (including the military industrial complex), because that’s a source of money, as well as an invaluable stamp of importance. It’s fine—even encouraged—to make veiled digs at China, Russia or North Korea, at the “bad actors” it sometimes refers to, but otherwise the industry avoids anything “political.” It also mostly frames the issues as centered on LLMs, because it wants to paint the tech products of its leaders as pivotally important in all respects. This then makes it a bit awkward to bring in military applications because it’s pretty obvious that LLMs have little current military value.
I personally came to AI research nearly ten years ago, from a deep curiosity about the nature of the mind and the self. At that time it was still a somewhat fringe subject, and as the field exploded into public awareness, I’ve been horrified to watch it intertwine with the most powerful and destructive systems on the planet, including the military-industrial complex, and, potentially, the outbreak of the next major global conflicts. To find the right way forward, we need to think much more deeply about where we’re going and what our values are. We need an authentic AI Ethics movement that questions the forces and assumptions shaping current development, rather than imbibing the views passed down from a few, often misguided, leaders."
https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/ai-ethics-discourse-ignores-its-deadliest-use-war
