COL Dave Barnes, PhD is Professor, United States Military Academy (USMA) and Deputy Head of the
Department of English and Philosophy. He serves as the Chief AI Ethics Officer for the US Army’s
Artificial Intelligence (AI) Task Force, advising the Army on incorporating ethics, law, and policy into
Army AI design, development, testing, and employment, and in this capacity has provided assistance to
the Joint AI Center (JAIC), Defense Innovation Board (DIB), National Security Commission on AI (NSCAI),
OSD Autonomy Community of Interest, and others. COL Barnes has served for over 30 years as an Armor
officer in the US and abroad, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordon, and Kuwait. His research interests
include the ethics of war and the ethics of emerging technology, especially AI. He is a DARPA Senior AI
Ethics Advisor, a Senior Advisor for the JAIC Responsible AI Subcommittee, and a Research Fellow at the
Stockholm Centre for the Ethics of War and Peace. He is a member of the Editorial Boards for The
Journal of Military Ethics and AI and Ethics, and he serves on the Board of Directors for the International
Society for Military Ethics (ISME). He is the author of The Ethics of Military Privatization: The US Armed
Contractor Phenomenon.
