There is a race going on in the artificial-intelligence sector. Everyone wants to get their hands on the next best thing as soon as possible. Ethics sometimes take a back seat in such cases. New technologies should be focused on human ethics and a universal desire to make life better for people around the world. This is a pressing concern when it comes to military intelligence. What is ethical and what isn’t? It has a lot of grey area in it. There is a case of privacy versus national security.
“Life-sciences is the area where I see the most incredible technical leaps and bounds every day,” said Steven Walker, director of the Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency, in a one on one conference with Northeastern University’s President, Joseph E. Aoun. “We have several programs at DARPA looking at how to make gene editing safe and actually reverse the gene edit if we need to.” “We’re also looking at infectious diseases. This is about being able to inject your cells and your muscles to produce antibodies automatically for a vaccine that we’ve never seen before—and do it in 60 days or less to protect a large population. This is work that we’ve been funding for about 10 years at universities, and now we’re going into clinical trials.”
The artificial-intelligence race among the leading nations, is important on one hand, but so is the fact that we must protect the sense of humanity. An attack from a drone sitting far off is very easy and does not come with as much guilt as shooting someone who is standing right in front of you and watching them die. As the wars get impersonal and lose the human touch, it gets cold and turns into a cold-blooded blood bath where no one wins. Hence, it is very important to always keep humanity close while making technological advances, especially when it comes to the military. Protecting our borders is important, but so is keeping the humanity in all of us alive.
Anushka Singh