The US military’s use of artificial intelligence and advanced roboticswill not include creating Terminator-style robots, the Pentagon’s second-in-command has said, as concerns increase over the role artificial intelligenceshould play in modern warfare.

五角大楼的二号指挥官表示，美军对人工智能和先进机器人技术的利用将不包括打造“终结者”式的机器人。目前各方日益担忧人工智能在现代战争中扮演的角色。

Military planners were looking at ways for machines to help humans makequicker decisions on the battlefield, said Robert Work, deputy secretary ofdefence.

美国国防部副部长罗伯特•沃克(Robert Work)表示，军事规划者正在寻求让机器帮助人类在战场上更快做出决策的方法。

“We will use artificial intelligence in the sense that it makes humandecisions better,”he said.

“我们将使用人工智能——在其让人类做出更好决策的意义上，”他表示。

The Pentagon’s multibillion-dollar investments in high-tech weapons have put itat the centre of a debate about the use of AI and robots in warfare, with ElonMusk, founder of Tesla, saying AI was “potentially moredangerous than nukes”.

五角大楼对高科技武器的巨额投资把其推到了围绕在战场上使用人工智能和机器人的辩论的风口浪尖。特斯拉(Tesla)创始人埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)表示，人工智能“可能比核武器更危险”。

Last year more than 1,000 of the biggest names in science and technology—including cosmologist Stephen Hawking and Mr Musk —signed anopen letter calling for a global ban on “killer robots”.

去年，逾1000名科技领域的著名人物在一封公开信上签名，呼吁在全球范围禁止“杀手机器人”，其中包括宇宙学家史蒂芬•霍金(Stephen Hawking)和马斯克。

Mr Work is leading the Pentagon’s push into fields such as AI androbotics, which the US military hopes will maintain its technological edge overChina and Russia for another generation. “We need to up our strategic game inan era of great power competition,”he said.

沃克主管五角大楼在人工智能和机器人等领域的项目，美国军方希望借此在又一代人的时间里保持美国相对于中国和俄罗斯的技术优势。“我们需要在大国竞争的时代提高我们的战略水平，”他说。

At a national security forum last December Mr Work voiced US concernsover the speed of developments in AI by Beijing and Moscow, saying the Russianarmy was “preparing to fight on a roboticised battlefield”.

在去年12月的一个国家安全论坛上，沃克表示美国担忧中俄两国发展人工智能的速度，称俄罗斯陆军正“准备在机器人化的战场上作战”。

The US’s investmentsinclude a range of unmanned aircraft, ships and submarines that will have anincreased level of autonomy. The Pentagon is also looking at supercomputersthat can seek intelligence and watch potential adversaries.

美国的投资包括一系列具有更高自主水平的无人机、无人舰艇和无人潜艇。五角大楼也在关注能够搜寻情报，监视潜在敌人的超级计算机。

“The thing that people like Elon Musk are most worried about is amachine that gets smart enough to rewrite its own code,”he said. “We are wayfar away from that.”

“埃隆•马斯克这样的人最担心的事情是机器变得足够智能，以至于能够改写自己的代码，”他表示，“我们离这种状态还遥远得很。”

General Paul Selva, deputy chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, saidthere needed to be a “firebreak”between a machine that can assess massive quantities of data tomake a targeting decision and one that decided on the use of force.

美国参谋长联席会议副主席保罗•塞尔瓦将军(General Paul Selva)表示，需要在一台能够评估海量数据以决定打击目标的机器与决定使用武力的机器之间树立一道“防火屏障”。

“As a human, it makes me very uncomfortable that we might make amachine that can make a decision about taking lethal action withoutunderstanding who programmed the consciousness of the machine,”he said.

“作为一个人，我们可能制造出一台能够作出采取致命行动的决策的机器，却不知道谁编写了这台机器的意识，这让我感到非常不舒服，”他说。