A report that Google is hedging on its pledge to stop participating in Project Maven, the military program to adopt artificial intelligence for drone targeting, brings to mind Hans Bethe’s 1995 plea to scientists and engineers developing new nuclear weapons: “cease and desist.” For the old lion of Los Alamos, there was only one way to end the perpetual technical refinement of weaponry: remove yourselves, all of you, right now. It was the logical conclusion of a line of thought he had expressed as early as 1954, regarding work on nuclear fusion armaments: “In the course of time, the present conflict between communism and democracy, between East and West, is likely to pass, just as the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries have passed. We can only hope that it will pass without thermonuclear war. But whichever way it goes, the H-bomb will remain with us and remain a perpetual danger to mankind.” Pity he is not here today to comment on the relentless development of autonomous lethal drones. Of course, few took his advice back then.
