Much has been said and written about how
artificial intelligence will revolutionize the world as we know it, from the way we learn
and work to how we traverse the globe and beyond. But concern is growing over
the
use of AI in warfare which, alongside climate change, could lead to
devastating consequences for humanity.
اضافة اعلان
AI already has combat experience. In March 2020, a
Turkish-made drone used facial recognition to
engage enemy combatants in Libya.
Three years on, there is still a lack of regulation on the advanced weapons
that seem to have come straight from the pages of a dystopian science-fiction
novel.
Digital dehumanizationQuestions worth asking stem from the near impossibility of
ensuring that autonomous weapons adhere to the principles of international
humanitarian law. Can we trust
autonomous weapons to be able to distinguish
between civilians and combatants? Will autonomous weapons be able to minimize
harm to civilians? Without human intervention, will it pull back in situations
where emotional judgment is critical?
In the
absence of human control, it will be difficult to fix
accountability for war crimes. Morally, allowing machines to make decisions
about killing humans, by reducing people to data, can be a form of
digital dehumanization. Strategically, the proliferation of AI weapons technology will
make it easier for countries to introduce AI weapons. But most importantly, by
reducing casualties, an increased deployment of
AI weapons will lower the
thresholds for countries to decide if they should go to war.
Alongside the increasing use of AI weapons technology, if
access and costs were to be significantly lowered so non-state actors could
include them in their arsenals, this could have catastrophic implications. With
their provenance difficult to prove, non-state actors could use
AI weapons to
wreak havoc while maintaining deniability.
International competition
Vladimir Putin’s infamous 2017 statement on AI, where he
reportedly said, “the one who becomes the leader in this sphere will be the
ruler of the world,” rings more true now than ever. There is a silent and
growing AI arms race today. This year, the Pentagon requested $145 billion from
the US Congress just for one fiscal year to boost spending on critical
technology and strengthening collaboration with the private sector.
In addition to calling for “building bridges with America’s
dynamic innovation ecosystem,” the request also called for AI funding. In
December, the Pentagon established the
Office of Strategic Capital (OSC) to
incentivize private-sector investment in military-use technologies. The office
also solicits ideas from the private sector on next-generation technologies,
one of which it describes as “Trusted AI and Autonomy,” without specifying what
trusted AI means.
Nonetheless, one hopes that this semantic shift is
reflective of serious consideration being given within the American
military-industrial complex to ethical and legal issues surrounding
AI in warfare. Or it could be linked to US-China competition.
China’s policy of
Military-Civilian Fusion (MCF) is similar
to the American strategy. The US has had a long head start, while China’s MCF
first emerged in the late 1990s. However, it has increasingly aimed to mirror
America’s military-industrial complex since Xi Jinping came to power. Just like
the OSC, MCF policy aims to pursue leadership in AI. One of its recommended
policy tools would sit just as well in the US; the MCF aims to establish
venture capital funds to encourage civilian innovation in AI.
Regulating AI
Concerns about AI proliferation aside – no country on the
planet can make a convincing case to become the sole arbiter of
AI standards in warfare. Neither is a global AI weapons ban feasible. Given this, there needs
to be urgent international focus on the need for global minimum standards on
the use of AI in warfare. This should also include a discussion on how AI will
increasingly transform warfare itself.
In March, a US government official spoke about using large
language models (LLM) in information warfare. While
ChatGPT has been pilloried
(and sued) for “hallucinating,” or generating fake information, more
sophisticated LLMs could be deployed by countries to generate hallucinations
against enemies. A military-grade LLM could be used to turbocharge fake news,
create deepfakes, increase phishing attacks and even subvert a country’s entire
information ecosystem. It is instructive that the US Defence Department
official referred to ChatGPT as the “talk of the town.”
In May, leading American AI firms,
including ChatGPT, asked
Congress to regulate AI. Even if standards were established, it would be
difficult to determine in situations where it becomes hard to discern the
boundary between the state and the private sector, whether due to a country’s
choice (China), weak institutions (Russia), or through a carefully nurtured symbiosis
(US). In Israel, successful tech firms that specialize in dual-use
military-civilian technology have been birthed by retired military officials.
The Israeli military has acknowledged using an AI tool to select targets for
airstrikes. Although its AI military tools are reportedly under human
supervision, they are not subject to regulation by any institution, just like
most countries.
It then becomes crucial to look at every
AI-using country’s domestic governing system – does it have, or want to have, institutions and
laws that regulate AI effectively? Unlike regulating nuclear weapons
proliferation, the world has made very little progress on the AI arms race.
This is likely due to the fast pace of innovation going on in the AI space. The
window of opportunity, then, for regulating AI, is fast shrinking. Will the
global community keep pace?
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