Threats of evil AI: The threat to peace

Ever since humans invented nuclear weapons, we have been fascinated by the ‘nuclear button,’ a figurative term referring to the power to launch a war in an instant. Various countries even have ‘nuclear briefcases’ enabling leaders to authorize a nuclear attack at any time. Nuclear superpowers have sophisticated systems ensuring that if attacked, they would most certainly retaliate with equal force.

Perhaps nuclear weapons have been used very scarcely precisely because of their enormous destructive power. Launching a nuclear attack would lead to mutually assured destruction: a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides that annihilates both the attacker and the defender.

Meanwhile, humans of course continued to fight wars. But those wars have been limited by the political costs associated with them. It is a non-trivial task for politicians to muster enough public support to go to war with another nation. This is in part due to the massive―and easily underestimated―monetary cost of war. But perhaps more importantly, it is due to the fact that going to war demands human sacrifice. Soldiers, who have been asked to fight for their nation either voluntarily or through a military draft, start returning in coffins. And they do so because anything short of full-scale nuclear war requires human warriors. But that is about to change!

When nations can go to non-nuclear-scale war with one another with a fully automated army, the calculus of going to war shifts dramatically. Instead of having to persuade the public to support the war with both funds and human lives, they only need to ask for the funds. It does not require a leap in reasoning to conclude that this may reduce the barriers to war, thus making nations more ‘trigger happy’ to initiate violent conflict.

By substantially reducing the sacrifice required to initiate it, AI may unleash unspeakable violence. And in the presence of substantial power imbalance between nations―only made greater by advances in AI―this could be devastating to poor nations. Just as Amazon’s ‘one-click purchase’ button might increase impulsive buying, ‘one-click warfare’ might increase impulsive interstate violence.

References

Scharre, P. Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War. (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018).