The next NMU Mathematics and Computer Science Department colloquium will be titled “Future Autonomous Weapons Will Make Moral Judgments.” Philosophy professor Zac Cogley will give the presentation at 3 p.m. on Friday, March 18, in 3100 Jamrich Hall. 

Recent results in deep computing, specifically the success of the program AlphaGo. suggests that future Autonomous Weapon Systems (AWS) will be able to approximate the human capacity for moral judgment and allow AWS to make targeting decisions for the right reasons.

Cogley joined the NMU faculty in fall 2010. Prior to that,he was a lecturer at UCLA. His philosophical interests are in ethics, social and political theory and agency theory.