Основные понятия
Rapid development and deployment of AI-powered autonomous weapon systems (AWS) by global militaries poses serious risks to geopolitical stability and threatens to undermine academic freedom and international collaboration in AI research.
Аннотация
The content outlines the current state of AWS development and deployment across air, ground, and naval domains, highlighting the rapid progress being made by major military powers like the US, China, and Russia. It argues that the increasing use of AWS, which can operate with minimal human oversight or control, risks lowering the political and human costs of initiating and escalating conflicts. This could lead to more frequent "low-intensity" conflicts between nations, as well as the rise of asymmetric warfare tactics like terrorism to deter AWS-heavy forces.
The content also warns that the military value of AWS will likely lead to increased restrictions and monitoring of civilian AI research, as governments seek to maintain their technological advantages. This could include export controls, publication oversight, and knowledge compartmentalization, threatening to undermine the open and collaborative nature of the AI research community. The authors argue that rather than futile attempts to restrict general AI research, policymakers and the AI community should focus on transparency, oversight, and responsible development of AWS to mitigate these risks.
The key policy recommendations include:
Maintaining a requirement for meaningful human control and presence in AWS deployments to avoid fully autonomous warfare.
Establishing clear international standards and oversight for acceptable levels of AWS autonomy.
Improving transparency around planned and deployed AWS capabilities, including their degree of autonomy and human oversight.
Implementing stronger ethics oversight and restrictions on military funding of academic AI research, similar to industry funding.
Статистика
"AWS that function as a substitute for "boots on the ground" are a threat to internal stability and representative government, unless careful safeguards are in place to protect against tyrannical use or sabotage of such systems."
"Reduced human battlefield presence makes journalistic transparency and civilian oversight of conflict more difficult, and makes it easier to hide war crimes and the impacts of war from both civilian leadership and the public."
"China has declared Military-Civil Fusion as foundational to updating its military with AWS capabilities, and major Chinese universities have been roped into AI weapons programs."
Цитаты
"The recent embrace of machine learning (ML) in the development of autonomous weapons systems (AWS) creates serious risks to geopolitical stability and the free exchange of ideas in AI research."
"Human "boots-on-the-ground" can signify a commitment to following the rules of war, improve humanitarian aspects of occupation, and most importantly maintain a human cost to war for aggressor nations that prevents a state of endless war from being politically feasible."
"AWS will become a revolutionary military technology, as did nuclear weapons, mechanized warfare, and others historically, but with important differences in the ease of AWS proliferation and impact on civilian technology development."