There\u2019s no need to worry about a robot uprising. We can always just pull the plug, right\u2026? RIGHT? <\/p>
New science-fiction movie The Creator <\/em>imagines a future in which humanity is at war with artificial intelligence <\/a>(AI). Hardly a novel concept for sci-fi, but the key difference here \u2013 as opposed to, say, The Terminator<\/em> \u2013 is that it arrives at a time when the prospect is starting to feel more like science fact than fiction.<\/p> The last few months, for instance, have seen numerous warnings about the \u2018existential threat\u2019 posed by AI. For not only could it one day write this column better than I can (unlikely, I\u2019m sure you\u2019ll agree), but it could also lead to frightening developments in warfare \u2013 developments that could spiral out of control.<\/p> The most obvious concern is a future in which AI is used to autonomously operate weaponry in place of humans. Paul Scharre<\/a>, author of Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence<\/em>, and vice president of the Center for a New American Security, cites the recent example of DARPA\u2019s (the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) AlphaDogfight challenge \u2013 an aerial simulator that pitted a human pilot against an AI<\/a>.<\/p> \u201cNot only did the AI crush the pilot 15 to zero,\u201d says Scharre, \u201cbut it made moves that humans can\u2019t make; specifically, very high-precision, split-second gunshots.\u201d <\/p> Yet the prospect of giving AI the power to make life or death decisions raises uncomfortable questions. For instance, what would happen if an AI made a mistake and accidentally killed a civilian? \u201cThat would be a war crime,\u201d says Scharre. \u201cAnd the difficulty is that there might not be anyone to hold accountable.\u201d<\/p> Read more:<\/strong><\/p> In the near future, however, the most likely use of AI in warfare will be in tactics and analysis. \u201cAI can help process information better and make militaries more efficient,\u201d says Scharre. <\/p> \u201cI think militaries are going to feel compelled to turn over more and more decision-making to AI, because the military is a ruthlessly competitive environment.<\/p> If there\u2019s an advantage to be gained, and your adversary takes it and you don\u2019t, you\u2019re at a huge disadvantage.\u201d This, says Scharre, could lead to an AI arms race, akin to the one for nuclear weapons.<\/p> \u201cSome Chinese scholars have hypothesised about a singularity on the battlefield,\u201d he says. \u201c[That\u2019s the] point when the pace of AI-driven decision-making eclipses the speed of a human\u2019s ability to understand and humans effectively have to turn over the keys to autonomous systems to make decisions on the battlefield.\u201d<\/p> Of course, in such a scenario, it doesn\u2019t feel impossible for us to lose control of that AI \u2013 or even for it to turn against us. Hence why it\u2019s US policy that humans are always in the loop regarding any decision to use nuclear weapons.<\/p> \u201cBut we haven\u2019t seen anything similar from countries like Russia and China,\u201d says Scharre. \u201cSo, it\u2019s an area where there\u2019s valid concern.\u201d If the worst was to happen, and an AI did declare war, Scharre is not optimistic about our chances.<\/p> \u201cI mean, could chimpanzees win a war against humans?\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cTop chessplaying AIs<\/a> aren\u2019t just as good as grandmasters; the top grandmasters can\u2019t remotely compete with them. And that happened pretty quickly.<\/p> It\u2019s only five years ago that that wasn\u2019t the case. \u201cWe\u2019re building increasingly powerful AI systems that we don\u2019t understand and can\u2019t control, and are deploying them in the real world. I think if we\u2019re actually able to build machines that are smarter than us, then we\u2019ll have a lot of problems.\u201d<\/p> About our expert, Paul Scharre<\/strong><\/p> Scharre is the Executive Vice President and Director of studies at the Center for a New Amercian Security (CNAS). He has written multiple books on the topic of artificial intelligence and warfare and was named one of the 100 most influential people in AI in 2023 by TIME<\/em> magazine.<\/p> Read more:<\/strong><\/p> There\u2019s no need to worry about a robot uprising. We can always just pull the plug, right\u2026? RIGHT? <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":33873,"template":"","categories":[1],"acf":{"readingTimeMinutes":"4"},"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/09\/heres-how-a-war-between-ai-and-humanity-would-actually-end.jpg",1200,800,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/09\/heres-how-a-war-between-ai-and-humanity-would-actually-end-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/09\/heres-how-a-war-between-ai-and-humanity-would-actually-end-300x200.jpg",300,200,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/09\/heres-how-a-war-between-ai-and-humanity-would-actually-end-768x512.jpg",768,512,true],"large":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/09\/heres-how-a-war-between-ai-and-humanity-would-actually-end-1024x683.jpg",800,534,true],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/09\/heres-how-a-war-between-ai-and-humanity-would-actually-end.jpg",1200,800,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/42\/2023\/09\/heres-how-a-war-between-ai-and-humanity-would-actually-end.jpg",1200,800,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"importmanagerhub@sprylab.com","author_link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/author\/importmanagerhubsprylab-com\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"There\u2019s no need to worry about a robot uprising. We can always just pull the plug, right\u2026? RIGHT?","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed\/33872"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rss_feed"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/rss_feed"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbcsciencefocus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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