US Democrats Propose Bill on Military Use of AI

Members of the US Democratic Party will propose a bill regulating the use of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) in the military, Axios reported on Friday. The bill, titled the ‘Responsible Artificial Intelligence in Defense Act,’ will be introduced on 8 June by two senators, Chris Coons and Jack Reed, according to the news portal. Under the bill, the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) would be required to ensure that AI systems used for military purposes remain under human supervision and can be manually disabled or overridden. This provision will remain in effect until AI reaches what is termed a ‘reliability threshold.’ The bill would also prohibit mass surveillance of the public within US territory using AI. Furthermore, AI would not be permitted to have the authority to make decisions relating to the launch of nuclear weapons. According to Axios, the lawmakers were prompted to propose the bill following a dispute between the US Department of Defense and Anthropic regarding the use of the company’s AI technology in secret or highly classified environments.