The paper contends that as AI increasingly emulates tasks of human judgment, abstraction, and decision-making, it challenges foundational conceptions of mind, agency, and moral responsibility. We put forth that the specter of AI is not that it resembles us, but that it may be mistaken for us. To navigate this frontier, we call for a multidisciplinary reckoning that integrates neuroethical inquiry, systems engineering, military doctrine, and philosophical rigor. Simply put, we argue that lest we cede judgment to machines, we must first and foremost be clear on what it means to judge…and who, or what, is truly capable of doing so.

Read the paper

Dr. James Giordano is the Director of the INSS Center for Disruptive Technology and Future Warfare. Elise Annett is an Institutional Research Associate at the National Defense University.