Ethical questions and military dominance in next generation computing

Abstract

American response to the Fifth Generation Project has been dominated by DARPA's Strategic Computing Initiative, which proposes to develop ambitious software and hardware technology for explicit military applications. The Initiative generates two classes of ethical questions: * how well will non-military social goals be furthered by this approach to computing development? * how well will national security goals be furthered by this approach to defense, and what role in social policy-assessment is to be played by computer professionals?