Democrats in Congress are pushing to pass bills that would limit the Defense Department’s use of artificial intelligence.
This week, Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California unveiled the Human Authority in Lethal Operations (HALO) Act, a bill that would require a human commander to have the final say on any course of action taken by autonomous weapons systems. The bill would also require detailed records to be made of how military decisions were made and targets were selected for later review, establish protections for whistleblowers and prohibit the use of AI in some cases involving nuclear weapons and mass surveillance.
“The past few months have shown us that there is an urgent need for common-sense barriers to ensure that the Department of Defense’s use of AI is consistent with Americans’ national security and privacy priorities,” Senator Schiff said in the press. release. “My legislation would protect Americans from unlawful domestic surveillance, ensure that humans in the chain of command exercise responsibility for the use of any lethal technology, and maintain strong ethical protections in the deployment of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons.”
Artificial intelligence has been part of warfare for some time. Militaries around the world employ the help of AI systems for targeting in attacks and mass surveillance, a notable example being the use of AI by Israeli army against the Palestinians. The United States has also long deployed artificial intelligence in military operations, even in its latest war against Iran.
But earlier this year, the use of AI in the military was catapulted to the top of public discourse when an existing agreement between the Pentagon and Anthropic collapsed, and in a unprecedented movement, the AI giant was designated as a supply chain risk. Anthropic had allegedly refused to get rid of security barriers on its AI systems that were intended to prevent the Department of Defense from using its models for mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, which meant little to no human involvement.
After the consequences of the agreement, the Pentagon signed contracts with Pretty much every other major AI company.including OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, SpaceX, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services. Meanwhile, Anthropic has challenged the designation in court, although reports say the Trump administration is heating to the company after the publication of MythsIts latest model is announced as a nightmare for the cybersecurity industry.
After the Trump administration’s public break with Anthropic, a large number of Democrats supported the artificial intelligence company and its stance. That list included Senator Schiff, author of the HALO Act.
“I wish we had more voices like Anthropic,” Senator Schiff said. saying at the Punchbowl press conference in March.
Schiff has introduced a number of AI-related bills in recent months, including proposals to require large data centers to pay for their own power and force AI companies to disclose protected by copyright work used to train models and bring AI Literacy classes to schools. Now, he is reportedly with the aim of accompanying this bill along with the annual military spending package, also known as NDAA, which must be approved no later than the end of the year.
He is not the only Democrat with a plan like this. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York presented a very similar invoice Earlier this month, they imposed restrictions on the use of AI in nuclear weapons deployment, domestic surveillance, and fully autonomous weapons. All this and more”high consequence actions“, as the bill defines them, would need the approval of a high-ranking Department of Defense official to move forward. Senator Gillibrand also reportedly plans to present the proposal as a amendment to the NDAA.
Then there’s the AI Guardrails Act introduced by Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan in March. Also aiming to establish guardrails very similar to those in Senator Schiff and Gillibrand’s bills, Senator Slotkin is reportedly preparing to also introduce it as an amendment to the NDAA.
While these three bills aim to ensure safety by incorporating human oversight into any decisions made by AI systems in military environments, the dangers don’t end there.
Many AI users tend to suffer from what experts call automation biasalso known as believing that an AI system can make more accurate judgments than you because it has access to more information or perhaps reason more efficiently. Obviously, that’s not true: the technology is far from perfect, and master’s students are prone to hallucinations or biased thinking. Combine that with the “black box” nature of AI, where users don’t have a full view of how or why the system reasons the way it does, and you have a military AI plan that could still lead to potentially fatal errors even with human oversight.
