In this episode, Mark Tooley, Marc LiVecche, and Mark Melton first discuss a couple articles about artificial intelligence and whether banning killer robots or similar technology would be wise. LiVecche points to Daniel Strand’s recent Providence article that argues a ban would be ineffective and AI can be beneficial. Then Melton reviews Mark Royce’s article about space exploration that questions whether the US spends too much on these adventures while chasing utopian dreams, though LiVecche comes to the defense of idealist exploration. Finally, the editors cover US relations with Germany.
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Marksism | Ep. 13: On Space Utopia, Artificial Intelligence, and More
By Mark Tooley & Marc LiVecche & Mark Melton on August 28, 2020
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Mark Tooley is IRD’s president and editor of IRD’s foreign policy and national security journal, Providence. Prior to joining the IRD in 1994, Mark worked eight years for the Central Intelligence Agency. He is a graduate of Georgetown University and is a native of Arlington, Virginia. He is the author of Taking Back The United Methodist Church, published in 2008; Methodism and Politics in the 20th Century, published in 2012; and The Peace That Almost Was: The Forgotten Story of the 1861 Washington Peace Conference and the Final Attempt to Avert the Civil War, published in 2015.
Follow Mark on Twitter: @markdtooley
Marc LiVecche is the executive editor of Providence. For the 2020-2021 academic year, he will be a fellow at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the US Naval Academy.From the summer of 2018 to fall of 2020, was the McDonald Research Scholar at the McDonald Centre for Theology, Ethics, & Public Life at Christ Church, Oxford University.
Prior to these roles, he completed doctoral studies at the University of Chicago, where he worked under the supervision of the political theorist and public intellectual Jean Bethke Elshtain, until her death in August, 2013. His first book, The Good Kill: Just War & Moral Injury, will be published in early 2021 by Oxford University Press. James Turner Johnson: Just War Historian, co-edited with Eric Patterson, examines the professional life of Jim Johnson and will be released this fall by Stone Tower Press. Currently, he is finalizing Moral Horror: A Just War Defense of Hiroshima. Before all this academic stuff, Marc spent twelve years doing a variety of things in Central Europe—ranging from helping build sport and recreational leagues in post-communist communities, to working at a Christian study and research center, to leading seminars on history and ethics onsite at the former Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp in Poland. This latter experience allowed him to continue his undergraduate study of the Shoah; a process which helped permanently inoculate him against pacifism.
Marc lives in Annapolis, Maryland with his wife and children–and a marmota monax whistlepigging under the shed.
Mark Melton is the managing editor for Providence and was the journal’s inaugural deputy editor. He earned his master’s degree in international relations from the University of St. Andrews and has focused on political economy, military affairs, and civil conflict, especially in Europe, Eurasia, and the Middle East. His bachelor’s degree in foreign language and international trade comes from Mississippi College. Prior to moving to DC, he worked as a political science adjunct professor at community colleges in Mississippi and also taught English in France.
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