Pentagon Urged to Create Off Switch for 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 ...