I, Warbot: The Dawn of Artificially Intelligent Conflict
by Kenneth Payne
(Hurst,  £20)

IN A recent column for Forbes magazine, venture capitalist Mark Minevich suggested “ethics leaders” in organisations such as Deloitte, IBM and the US army will ensure artificial intelligence (AI) is leveraged for the benefit of humanity.

Kenneth Payne’s I, Warbot is the antidote to this glib optimism. It highlights subtle issues affecting the design and impact of military AI and attempts to craft an ethical framework appropriate to its development.

Payne’s starting point is the three laws of robotics proposed by Isaac Asimov in his science fiction classic I, Robot and he points out that rules predicated on protecting humans from harm and injury are irrelevant to machines designed for violence. And Asimov’s principles do not cover neural networks and other learning machines that exhibit an unanticipated repertoire of behaviours.