The military wants to teach robots morality

Oli Scarff/Getty Images

The military wants to teach robots morality
(Image credit: Oli Scarff/Getty Images)

Do androids dream of electric sheep? Or, more to the point, do they know the difference between right and wrong?

That's the question the U.S. military is hoping to tackle, as it will hand out $7.5 million in grants over the next five years to researchers tasked with defining human morality, and then trying to instill it in autonomous robots.

"We are playing catch-up trying to figure out the ethical and legal implications" of rapidly-evolving autonomous technologies, Paul Bello, from the Office of Naval Research, told Defense One. "We do not want to be caught similarly flat-footed in any kind of military domain where lives are at stake."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

In related news, the United Nations is hosting a summit on the possibility of killer robots. I'd like to go on record now as saying I, for one, welcome our new deadly, moral robot overlords.

Explore More
Jon Terbush

Jon Terbush is an associate editor at TheWeek.com covering politics, sports, and other things he finds interesting. He has previously written for Talking Points Memo, Raw Story, and Business Insider.