{"id":2323,"date":"2024-09-10T21:33:20","date_gmt":"2024-09-10T18:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/?page_id=2323"},"modified":"2024-09-16T01:53:40","modified_gmt":"2024-09-15T22:53:40","slug":"how-ai-will-revolutionize-warfare","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/?page_id=2323","title":{"rendered":"How AI Will Revolutionize Warfare"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

FP<\/mark><\/a><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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The new arms race in technology has no rules and few guardrails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Michael Hirsh<\/strong><\/a>, a columnist for Foreign Policy<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

APRIL 11, 2023, 10:09 AM View Comments (0)<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to advanced artificial intelligence, much of the debate has focused on whether white-collar workers are now facing the sort of extinction-level threat that the working class once did with robotics. And while it\u2019s suddenly likely that AI will be capable of duplicating a good part of what lawyers, accountants, teachers, programmers, and\u2014yes\u2014journalists do, that\u2019s not even where the most significant revolution is likely to occur.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The latest AI\u2014known as generative pre-trained transformers (GPT)\u2014promises to utterly transform the geopolitics of war and deterrence. It will do so in ways that are not necessarily comforting, and which may even turn existential.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On one hand, this technology could make war less lethal and possibly strengthen deterrence. By dramatically expanding the role of AI-directed drones in air forces, navies and armies, human lives could be spared. Already, the U.S. Defense Department is experimenting with AI bots that can fly a modified F-16 fighter jet, and Russia has been testing autonomous tank-like vehicles. China is rushing to roll out its own AI-run systems, and the effectiveness of armed drones will also take off in coming years. One of the largest, although still nascent, efforts to advance AI is a secretive U.S. Air Force program, Next Generation Air Dominance<\/a>, under which some 1,000 drone \u201cwingmen,\u201d called collaborative combat aircraft, operate alongside 200 piloted planes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI can easily imagine a future in which drones outnumber people in the armed forces pretty considerably,\u201d said Douglas Shaw, senior advisor at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. According to retired U.S. Air Force Gen. Charles Wald, \u201cThat\u2019ll be a force multiplier. One of the biggest problems right now is recruiting.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, AI-driven software could lead the major powers to cut down their decision-making window to minutes instead of hours or days. They could come to depend far too much on AI strategic and tactical assessments, even when it comes to nuclear war. The danger, said Herbert Lin of Stanford University, is that decision-makers could gradually rely on the new AI as part of command and control of weaponry, since it operates at vastly greater speeds than people can.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a book published this year, AI and the Bomb<\/em>, James Johnson of the University of Aberdeen imagines<\/a> an accidental nuclear war in the East China Sea in 2025 precipitated by AI-driven intelligence on both the U.S. and Chinese sides, and \u201cturbo-charged by AI-enabled bots, deepfakes, and false-flag operations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe real problem is how little it takes to convince people that something is sentient, when all GPT amounts to is a sophisticated auto-complete,\u201d said Lin, a cybersecurity expert who serves on the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Given AI\u2019s propensity to hyperbole, Lin said, \u201cwhen people start to believe that machines are thinking, they\u2019re more likely to do crazy things.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a report<\/a> published in early February, the Arms Control Association said AI and other new technologies, such as hypersonic missiles, could result in \u201cblurring the distinction between a conventional and nuclear attack.\u201d The report said that the scramble to \u201cexploit emerging technologies for military use has accelerated at a much faster pace than efforts to assess the dangers they pose and to establish limits on their use. It is essential, then, to slow the pace of weaponizing these technologies, to carefully weigh the risks in doing so, and to adopt meaningful restraints on their military use.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

U.S. officials have said they are doing so, but they may be navigating a slippery slope. This January, the Defense Department updated<\/a> its directive on weapons systems involving the use of artificial intelligence, saying that at least some human judgment must be used in developing and deploying autonomous weapon systems. At the same time, however, the Pentagon is experimenting with AI to integrate decision-making from all service branches and multiple combatant commands. And with the Biden administration cracking down on high-tech exports to China, especially advanced semiconductors, in order to maintain the current U.S. lead in AI, the Pentagon is likely to accelerate those efforts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Wald said, \u201cI do think that AI will help with target prioritization. This could prove useful in the strategy against China, which owns a home field advantage over the U.S. in bridging the vast distances in the Pacific that could interfere with a coordinated response to an attack\u201d on Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a 2019 speech, Lt. Gen. Jack Shanahan, the former director of the Pentagon\u2019s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said that while the Defense Department was eagerly pursuing \u201cintegration of AI capabilities,\u201d this would definitely not include nuclear command and control. Shanahan added that he could imagine a role for AI in determining how to use lethal force\u2014once a human decision is made. \u201cI\u2019m not going to go straight to \u2018lethal autonomous weapons systems,\u2019\u201d he said, \u201cbut I do want to say we will use artificial intelligence in our weapons systems \u2026 to give us a competitive advantage. It\u2019s to save lives and help deter war from happening in the first place.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question is whether the Chinese and Russians, along with other third parties, will follow the same rules as Washington.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t believe the U.S. is going to go down the path of allowing things \u2026 where you don\u2019t have human control,\u201d Wald said. \u201cBut I\u2019m not sure somebody else might not do that. In the wrong hands with the wrong I think the biggest concern would be allowing this machine or entity too much latitude.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another concern is that advanced AI technology could allow rogue actors such as terrorists to gain knowledge in building dirty bombs or other lethal devices. And AI is now shared by far more actors than during the Cold War, meaning that it could be used to detect nuclear arms sites, reducing the deterrent effect of keeping their locations secret. \u201cAI will change the dynamic of hiding and finding things,\u201d said Shaw, who noted that much of the data today is held by private companies that might be vulnerable to AI-driven espionage and probing of weapons systems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What seems clear is that a new AI arms race is underway, and there is probably little that can be done to stop it. In an open letter in late March, more than 2,000 technology leaders and researchers\u2014including Elon Musk and Steve Wozniak\u2014called on labs worldwide to pause in training up the newest digital intelligence models because of cascading fears that they could lead to disaster for the human race.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their warning of an existential threat to society may be somewhat exaggerated; the letter was criticized<\/a> by some AI experts as \u201cfearmongering\u201d over the illusion that these models can ever be sentient, as in sci-fi movies like The Terminator<\/em>. \u201cIt\u2019s not Skynet,\u201d said Lin, referring to the AI villain that destroyed human civilization in the famous 1984 movie. \u201cBut it could lead to human error based on overdependence. It\u2019s a precision-guided munition against human intelligence and human rationality.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moreover, the idea that governments are going to sanction a delay for safety\u2019s sake is unlikely in the extreme. This is not only because the world\u2019s biggest tech companies are engaged in vicious competition, especially in Silicon Valley, but also because the new technology is being rolled out in an international environment in which the U.S., China, and Russia are now embroiled in a grim struggle for dominance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s important to remember that the enemy gets a vote,\u201d said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. David Deptula. \u201cEven if we stopped autonomy research and other military AI development, the Chinese and to a lesser degree Russians will certainly continue their own AI research. Both countries have shown little interest in pursuing future arms control agreements.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The open letter was only the latest evidence of what can only be called a widespread panic since ChatGPT appeared on the scene late last fall and major tech companies scrambled to introduce their own AI systems with so-called human-competitive intelligence. The issues at stake, the letter said<\/a>, were fundamental to human civilization: \u201cShould<\/em> we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth? Should<\/em> we automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones? Should<\/em> we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete and replace us? Should<\/em> we risk loss of control of our civilization?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the key line was this one: If the companies that fund AI labs don\u2019t agree to such a pause, then \u201cgovernments should step in and institute a moratorium.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As far back as 2017, though, Russian President Vladimir Putin declared<\/a> that \u201cthe one who becomes the leader in this sphere [AI] will be the ruler of the world,\u201d and that future wars will be decided \u201cwhen one party\u2019s drones are destroyed by drones of another.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The biggest problem, said Shaw, of the Nuclear Threat Initiative, is that \u201cwe\u2019re not really having a conversation about what\u2019s next.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many others agree. DARPA\u2014the Pentagon\u2019s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency\u2014is conducting a wide-ranging research program called AI Forward<\/a>. DARPA spokesman Matt Turek said recently<\/a> that generative AI systems such as ChatGPT have raised serious new issues about \u201cthe level of reliability that we probably need \u2026 for life or death decision-making.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Michael Hirsh<\/strong> is a columnist for Foreign Policy. <\/em>He is the author of two books: Capital Offense: How Washington\u2019s Wise Men Turned America\u2019s Future Over to Wall Street<\/em> and At War With Ourselves: Why America Is Squandering Its Chance to Build a Better World<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

READ MORE<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who\u2019s Winning the AI Race? It\u2019s Not That Simple.<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Figuring out who\u2019s ahead is a lot tougher than counting rockets or warheads.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

EXPLAINER <\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

RISHI IYENGAR<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

FP The new arms race in technology has no rules and few guardrails. By Michael Hirsh, a columnist for Foreign Policy. APRIL 11, 2023, 10:09 AM View Comments (0) When it comes to advanced artificial intelligence, much of the debate has focused on whether white-collar workers are now facing the sort of extinction-level threat that the working class once […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_regular_price":[],"currency_symbol":[],"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2323","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"post_slider_layout_featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":"","post_slider_layout_landscape_large":"","post_slider_layout_portrait_large":"","post_slider_layout_square_large":"","post_slider_layout_landscape":"","post_slider_layout_portrait":"","post_slider_layout_square":"","full":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2323","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2323"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2323\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2500,"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2323\/revisions\/2500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/kaf1.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2323"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}