Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) has introduced a bill that would regulate the Pentagon’s use of artificial intelligence technology.
The rise of AI has sparked national debate over its use in several different areas. But when it comes to military use, the national conversation has intensified amid concerns that the technology could be misused.
From NBC News:
The bill seeks to codify two existing Defense Department guidelines into law: that AI cannot autonomously decide to kill a target and that the technology cannot be used to help the military conduct mass surveillance on Americans. It would also ban the use of the technology for launching or detonating a nuclear weapon.
“We’re unhealthy as a political system, and so we focus more on things like Greenland than we do on the use of AI in matters of legal force. And it’s our responsibility to legislate this,” Slotkin told NBC News.
The first two tenants of the bill were at the center of the U.S. military’s acrimonious split with AI giant Anthropic in recent weeks. While the Pentagon has insisted that it regards conducting mass surveillance of Americans as illegal already and that its policy mandates that a human be responsible for lethal decisions, Anthropic worried that loopholes could allow for that surveillance anyway and that future administrations could revoke those guidelines.
The feud boiled over into President Donald Trump’s decreeing that all federal agencies have six months to stop using Anthropic models and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s declaring the company a supply chain risk, despite the fact that the technology has still helped the U.S. identify military targets in its ongoing war with Iran.