nuclear-news

TODAY: The “tech bros” are going to have a global party with AI in warfare. Should we let them be in control?

Today I waded through a very worthy article – A new military-industrial complex: How tech bros are hyping AI’s role in war. Trouble is – I didn’t really understand it. Written by two highly qualified military experts, – it was couched in military jargon that was mostly impenetrable to me.

Good on them for knowing their stuff. But their underlying assumption seems to me that the world will continue to have whopping great wars, between the great powers, with the conflict being dominated by Artificial Intelligence methods – not only in physical, but also in psychological, warfare.

But, to be fair to these military experts, they do warn about the pitfalls of AI in warfare, and they do repeatedly remind us that the “primrose path” of AI warfare is being laid down, not by political leaders, not by military experts, but by the tech squillionaires:

“The current debate on military AI is largely driven by “tech bros” and other entrepreneurs who stand to profit immensely from militaries’ uptake of AI-enabled capabilities.”…….. “framing the future direction of war, despite their lack of military experience.”

We really are in a strange world – where we can let these ignoramuses (?ignorami) run things. You bristle at the term “ignoramus”? But the tech bros are ignorant – it seems, of all sorts of areas that really matter – ecology, biology, social history, diplomacy, ethics ….. They live in this wonderful STEM world, which is supposed to be the only part of knowledge that matters. Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics – yes those studies do matter – but they are not the only ones that matter.

I am grateful to these authors, Paul Lushenko and Keith Carter for tackling this timely subject.

They’ve done a great job, and I hope that military planners will pay attention to their work.

But even more, I hope that influential leaders of other kinds will also take up this question of should we let the tech squillionaires run things , especially war, for us?

October 12, 2024 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Christina's notes