On Wednesday, I hosted a discussion with former secretary of defense Ashton Carter, who is now the director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The conversation was part of WIRED’s CES programming, which tackled the biggest trends that will shape 2021, from medicine to autonomous driving to defense. We took questions from viewers in real time. The conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
Nicholas Thompson: You’ve had an incredible 35-year career in the US government and in the private sector, working for Republicans and Democrats, always trying to identify what the most important issue of our time is, the smartest solutions to it, and the fairest ways to think about it.
When you were secretary of defense, you had a very rational policy that in every kill decision, a human would have to be involved. So if there were an artificial intelligence weapon, it could not make a decision to fire from a drone. And the question I've been wondering about is whether that justification remains the same for defensive weapons. You can imagine a future missile defense system that can more accurately than a human identify that there is a missile incoming, more accurately than a human aim the response, and more quickly than a human make the decision. Do we need to have humans in the loop in defensive situations as well as offensive situations?
Ash Carter: Well, defense is easier in the moral sense than offense. No question about it. By the way, Nick, you used the phrase “person in the loop.” I don't think that's really practical. It's not literally possible, and hasn ..
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