AI Ethics Scholar Warns Against Giving Government Power to Artificial Intelligence

On his show, Joe Rogan proposed that as AI becomes ubiquitous, societies might eventually outsource governmental decision-making to machines, even envisioning an end to war. Shannon Vallor, who chairs the Ethics of Data and AI at the University of Edinburgh and co-directs the Centre for Technomoral Futures, said the concept is no longer speculative, citing widespread AI adoption in defense and corporate settings. Surveys show a majority of UK and US CEOs already rely on AI chatbots for choices, and recent incidents suggest AI failures have contributed to security mishaps, such as the bombing of an Iranian school.

Vallor warned that habitual reliance on AI could produce "cognitive" and "moral" deskilling, weakening leaders' ability to assess complex human consequences. She acknowledged that narrowly defined AI tools can aid logistics or forecasting, but stressed that broader, general-purpose AI cannot grasp the human stakes of conflict. Ultimately, she argued that trust and accountability must stay with human officials, not software.