Editors Note:All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board. Letters to the Editor reflect the view of a member of the campus community and are submitted to the publication for approval.

To the Editor,

I am writing this essay to bring awareness and recognition to a fast-approaching topic in the field of military technology weaponized artificial intelligence.

Weaponized AI is any military technology that operates off a computer system that makes its own decisions. Simply put, anything that automatically decides a course of action against an enemy without human control would fall under this definition.

Weaponized AI is a perfect example of a sci-fi idea that has found its way into the real world and is not yet completely understood. This said, weaponized AI places global security at risk and must be recognized by institutions like Colorado State University before it becomes widely deployed on the battlefield.

Nations are constantly racing to employ the next best weapon as it is developed. AI is no exception. Currently, AI is responsible for the one of the largest technology competitions since that of nuclear weapons during the Cold War. At the top of this competition is China and the United States.

With little to no international restrictions on the deployment of AI weaponry, a modern arms race will continue to develop, creating tensions between world powers as fear of the opposing team reaching the perfect AI weapon arises.

The other inherent danger is the gap that is being created between advanced world powers and countries who are incapable of developing such technology. The tendency for global conflict to occur between these nations increases, as powers that wield weaponized AI have a distinct edge over countries that do not employ AI. This allows room for misuse of this power given the lack of international regulations on using this tech.

What we have is a blurring of moral boundaries as we come closer to allowing this technology to determine who is a true threat.

Going further, my studies have shown that this technology poses considerable risk to international human rights laws. In its current state, weaponized AI is found to be unreliable in doing what it is intended to do. As an example, Project Maven, a current AI used by the United States, only identifies military threats using complex algorithms.

While this seems harmless, the direction in which the world is taking this technology is not. What would happen if this technologys unreliability costs innocent lives due to a targeting error that AIs, like Project Maven, are prone to making? Likewise, who would take responsibility for the actions of a machine?

What we have is a blurring of moral boundaries as we come closer to allowing this technology to determine who is a true threat. These kinds of errors cannot be tolerated by the rules of modern warfare.

A final obstacle surrounding AI is the United Nations inability to come to a consensus on its use. Researcher Eugenio Garcia with the United Nations stated, Advanced military powers remain circumspect (guarded) about introducing severe restrictions on the use of these technologies.

Although people easily recognize the dangers that AI poses to national security, countries are not willing to restrict the development. Furthermore, with minimal current legislation on the unreliability of the technology, weaponized AI will move further than what we can control.

While I make these claims, one must recognize that the technology does offer the benefit of removing soldiers from the battlefield. However, nations around the world are not monitoring this rising issue.

Colorado State University, being a tier one research facility that has investment in military technology, will be the institution that does step up to the plate and recognize catastrophe before it happens. These threats to global security may not be present now, but if we do not advocate for international legislation, these dangers will become reality.

Sincerely,

Thomas Marshall

Third-year mechanical engineering student at CSU

Working under Azer Yalin as an undergraduate research assistant exploring Air Force technology

The Collegians opinion desk can be reached atletters@collegian.com. To submit a letter to the editor, pleasefollow the guidelines at collegian.com.

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LTTE: It's important to know of weaponized artificial intelligence - Rocky Mountain Collegian

PARIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Iktos, a company specialized in Artificial Intelligence for novel drug design and Almirall, S.A. (ALM), a leading skin-health focused global pharmaceutical company, today announced a collaboration agreement in Artificial Intelligence (AI), where Iktos generative modelling technology will be used to design novel optimized compounds, to speed up the identification of promising drug candidates for undisclosed Almirall drug discovery program(s).

Iktos AI technology, based on deep generative models, helps bring speed and efficiency to the drug discovery process, by automatically designing virtual novel molecules that have all desirable characteristics of a novel drug candidate. This tackles one of the key challenges in drug design: rapid and iterative identification of molecules which simultaneously validate multiple bioactive attributes and drug-like criteria for clinical testing.

This partnership is an example of how we intend to explore the enormous possibilities offered by technology to find new molecules and to speed up clinical development, said Dr. Bhushan Hardas, Executive Vice President R&D, Chief Scientific Officer of Almirall. The health sector lags behind others in the digital world. Almirall wants to be at the forefront of innovation to develop holistic and transversal approaches. Artificial Intelligence will provide Almirall a unique opportunity to combine our proficiency with the preciseness and celerity to truly make a difference in patients' lives.

We are thrilled to initiate a new research collaboration with Almirall commented Yann Gaston-Math, President and CEO of Iktos. This new collaboration is further testimony to the leadership position that Iktos has developed in the field of AI for de novo drug design, in little more than two years of existence. We are eager to demonstrate to our collaborators the power of Iktos technology to accelerate their research, and to get the opportunity to further improve by confronting our approach to a new use case, consistently with our strategy to prove our value in real-life projects.

Iktos has recently announced several collaborations with biopharmaceutical companies where Iktos AI technology is used to accelerate the design of promising compounds, and has published, at the EFMC 2018 meeting, an experimental validation of the technology in a real-life drug discovery project. Iktos generative modelling SaaS software, Makya, is now available on the market, and Iktos intends to release its retrosynthesis SaaS platform Spaya as a beta version, before the end of 2019.

About Iktos

Incorporated in October 2016, Iktos is a French start-up company specialized in the development of artificial intelligence solutions applied to chemical research, more specifically medicinal chemistry and new drug design. Iktos is developing a proprietary and innovative solution based on deep learning generative models, which enables, using existing data, to design molecules that are optimized in silico to meet all the success criteria of a small molecule discovery project. The use of Iktos technology enables major productivity gains in upstream pharmaceutical R&D. Iktos offers its technology both as professional services and as a SaaS software platform, Makya.

About Almirall

Almirall is a leading skin-health focused global pharmaceutical company that partners with healthcare professionals, applying Science to provide medical solutions to patients and future generations. Our efforts are focused on fighting against skin health diseases and helping people feel and look their best. We support healthcare professionals by continuous improvement, bringing our innovative solutions where they are needed.

The company, founded almost 75 years ago with headquarters in Barcelona, is listed on the Spanish Stock Exchange (ticker: ALM). Almirall has been key in value creation to society according to its commitment with to major shareholders and through its decision to help others, to understand their challenges and to use Science to provide solutions for real life. Total revenues in 2018 were 811 million euros. More than 1,800 employees are devoted to Science.

For more information, please visit almirall.com

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Iktos and Almirall Announce Research Collaboration in Artificial Intelligence for New Drug Design - Business Wire

AI2 CEO Oren Etzioni spakes at the Technology Alliances AI Policy Matters Summit. (GeekWire Photo / Monica Nickelsburg)

Artificial intelligence is here, its just the beginning, and its time to start thinking about how to regulate it.

Those were the takeaways from the Technology Alliances AI Policy Matters Summit, a Seattle event that convened experts and government officials for a conversation about artificial intelligence. Many of those experts agreed that the government should start establishing guardrails to defend against malicious or negligent uses of artificial intelligence. But determining what shape those regulations should take is no easy feat.

Its not even clear what the difference is between AI and software, said Oren Etzioni, CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, on stage at the event. Where does something cease to be a software program and become an AI program? Google, is that an AI program? It uses a lot of AI in it. Or is Google software? How about Netflix recommendations? Should we regulate that? These are very tricky topics.

Regulations written now will also have to be nimble enough to keep up with the evolving technology, according to Heather Redman, co-founder of the venture capital firm, Flying Fish Ventures.

Weve got a 30-40 year technology arc here and were probably in year five, so we cant do a regulation that is going to fix it today, she said during the event. We have to make it better and go to the next level next year and the next level the year after that.

With those challenges in mind, Etzioni and Redman recommend regulations that are tied to specific use cases of artificial intelligence, rather than broad rules for the technology. Laws should be targeted to areas like AI-enabled weapons and autonomous vehicles, they said.

My suggestion was to identify particular applications and regulate those using existing regulatory regimes and agencies, Etzioni said. That both allows us to move faster and also be more targeted in our application of regulations, using a scalpel rather than a sledgehammer.

He believes the rules should include a mandatory kill switch on all AI programs and requirements that AI notify users when they are not interacting with a human. Etzioni also stressed the importance of humans taking responsibility for autonomous systems, though it isnt clear whether the manufacturer or user of the technology will be liable.

Lets say my car ran somebody over, he said. I shouldnt be able to say my dog ate my homework. Hey I didnt do it, it was my AI car. Its an autonomous vehicle. We have to take responsibility for our technology. We have to be liable for it.

Redman also sees the coming tide of A.I. regulation as a business opportunity for startups seeking to break into the industry. Her venture capital firm is inundated with startups pitching an A.I. and M.L. first approach but Redman said there are two other related fields, or stacks as she describes them, that companies should be exploring.

If you talk to somebody on Wall Street, they dont care what tech stack theyre running their trading on theyre looking at new evolutions in law and policy as big opportunities to build new businesses or things that will kill existing businesses, she said.

From a startup perspective, if youre not thinking about the law and policy stack as much as youre thinking about the tech stack, youre making a mistake, Redman added.

But progress toward a regulatory framework has been slow at the local and federal level. In the last legislative session, Washington state almost became one of the first to regulate facial recognition, the controversial technology that is pushing the artificial intelligence debate forward. But the bill died in the state House. Lawmakers plan to introduce data privacy and facial recognition bills again next session.

Redman said shes disappointed Washington state wasnt a first-mover on AI regulation because the company is home to two of the tech giants consumers trust most with their data: Amazon and Microsoft. Amazon is in the political hot seat along with many of its tech industry peers but the Seattle tech giant has not been implicated in the types of data privacy scandals plaguing Facebook.

We are the home of trusted tech, Redman said, and we need to lead on the regulatory frameworks for tech.

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Tech experts agree its time to regulate artificial intelligence if only it were that simple - GeekWire

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Saying the most important thing to do is just dive in, Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, director of the Department of Defense Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, talked to U.S. Naval War College students and faculty on Dec. 12 about the challenges and opportunities of fielding artificial intelligence technology in the U.S. military.

On one side of the emerging tech equation, we need far more national security professionals who understand what this technology can do or, equally important, what it cannot do, Shanahan told his audience in the colleges Mahan Reading Room.

On the other side of the equation, we desperately need more people who grasp the societal implications of new technology, who are capable of looking at this new data-driven world through geopolitical, international relations, humanitarian and even philosophical lenses, he said.

At the Joint AI Center, established in 2018 at the Pentagon, Shanahan is responsible for accelerating the Defense Departments adoption and integration of AI in order to quickly affect national security operations at the largest possible scale.

He told the Naval War College audience that the most valuable contribution of AI to U.S. defense will be how it helps human beings to make better, faster and more precise decisions, especially during high-consequence operations.

AI is like electricity or computers. Like electricity, AI is a transformative, general-purpose enabling technology capable of being used for good or for evil but not a thing unto itself. It is not a weapons system, a gadget or a widget, said the Air Force general whose prior position was director of Project Maven, a Defense Department program using machine learning to autonomously extract objects of interest from photos or video.

If I have learned anything over the past three years, its that theres a chasm between thinking, writing and talking about AI, and doing it, Shanahan said.

There is no substitute whatsoever for rolling up ones sleeves and diving in an AI project, he said.

Shanahan said adapting the Department of Defense to the AI world will be a multigenerational journey, requiring both urgency and patience.

He compared this moment in history to the period between World War I and World War II, when new ideas led to an explosion not just in military innovation but in technology advancement that eventually helped create Silicon Valley.

Now, the private sector is leading the way on AI, which leaves the Defense Department playing catch-up, Shanahan said. However, he added that he sees the U.S. militarys efforts running at a tempo comparable to commercial industry in five years from now.

China, he said, sees AI as a way to leapfrog over the current U.S. defense advantages.

The Chinese military has identified intelligent-ization as a military revolution on par with mechanization from the internal combustion engine, Shanahan said. They are sprinting to incorporate AI technology in all aspects of their military, and the Chinese commercial industry is more than willing to help.

After the speech, in an interview, Shanahan said AI isnt an arms race, but it is a strategic competition.

Regardless of what China does or does not do in AI, we have to accelerate our adoption of it. Its that important to our future, he said.

For example, Shanahan said, in 15 years, what if China has a fully AI-enabled military force, and the United States does not.

To me that scenario brings us an unacceptably high risk of failure because of the speed of the fight in the future, which we have not been prepared for as a result of fighting in the Middle East for 20-some years, he said. That, to me, is the best stark example of why we have to move in this direction.

Looking at the importance of military higher education in the effort, Shanahan said the role of institutions such as the Naval War College is to make a place for the militarys rising stars to think about new ways to harness AI.

What you are here to do is think strategy, the strategic and societal implications of using emerging and disruptive technology, he said.

You will find somebody comes out of here that has a spark, a lightbulb moment, that wants to go back and try this idea they developed while they were here, said Shanahan, who is a 1996 graduate of the Naval War Colleges College of Naval Command and Staff.

The Joint AI Center director said another role for military higher-education institutions is research on practical applications of AI.

Its the thinking about grand strategy and technology together that may be as important to the future of operating concepts as anything else, he said.

Source: USNWC Public Affairs Office | Jeanette Steele, U.S. Naval War College Public Affairs

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Joint Artificial Intelligence Center Director tells Naval War College audience to 'Dive In' on AI - What'sUpNewp