2. What's driving the military Ai policy?

Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong examine the decisions shaping the adoption of military AI in the United States and beyond, asking whether governance is keeping pace — or whether responsibility is being left to the technology’s creators.

A recent dispute between Anthropic and the Pentagon revealed that commercial contracts, rather than clear policy, are helping to define how AI can be used by the military. But the disagreement was less about ethics than about timing, with the military pressing ahead to adopt systems before their developers considered them sufficiently reliable.

Dr Brianna Rosen reflects on what this tells us about the lack of detailed policy, regulation and legal frameworks governing AI in warfare, while journalist and author Katrina Manson explains what we can learn from the origins of the US military’s core AI programme as explored in her book, Project Maven, the subject of her book Project Maven: A Marine Colonel, His Team, and the Dawn of AI Warfare.

Presenters: Aleks Krotoski and Kevin Fong
Producer: Peter McManus
Sound: Fraser Jackson and Gav Murchie