AI being used for military purposes is a scary thought, but it’s ultimately inevitable. The best that can be hoped for is that it’s used in a sensible way that addresses people’s concerns.

The publishing of the whitepaper arrives in the wake of Google employees resigning over the company’s defense contract to provide AI knowledge to the US military’s drone project. Google has since decided against renewing the contract.

Some military planners and defense contractors struggle to understand the concerns of employees from Silicon Valley giants like Google, and the EFF is hoping to ‘bridge the gap’ to help them.

The EFF wants three core questions to be considered:

• What are the major technical and strategic risks of applying current machine learning methods in weapons systems or military command and control?
• What are the appropriate responses that states and militaries can adopt in response?
• What kinds of AI are safe for military use, and what kinds aren’t?

One concept which has a lot of support is that any decision to kill must ultimately be made by a human operator, even if an AI recommends it. This ensures human compassion plays a part and guarantees accountability when mistakes occur instead of faulty programming.

In a blog post, the EFF wrote:

“Machine learning technologies have received incredible hype, and indeed they have made exciting progress on some fronts, but they remain brittle, subject to novel failure modes, and vulnerable to diverse forms of adversarial attack and manipulation.

They also lack the basic forms of common sense and judgment on which humans usually rely.”

At this time, the EFF highlights these points as reasons to keep AI away from things like target selection, fire control, and most command, control, and intelligence (C2I) roles at least for the foreseeable future.

Part I identifies how military use of AI could lead to unexpected dangers and risks:

• Machine learning systems can be easily fooled or subverted: neural networks are vulnerable to a range of novel attacks including adversarial examples, model stealing, and data poisoning.
• The current balance of power in cybersecurity significantly favours attackers over defenders.
• Many of the recent lauded AI accomplishments have come from the field of reinforcement learning (RL) but current state-of-the-art RL systems are unpredictable, hard to control, and unsuited to complex real-world deployment.
• Interactions between the systems deployed will be extremely complex, impossible to model, and subject to catastrophic forms of failure that are hard to mitigate. As a result, there is a serious risk of accidental or escalation of conflict.

Part II offers and elaborates on an agenda for mitigating these risks:

• Support and establish international institutions and agreements for managing AI, and AI-related risks, in military contexts.
• Focus on machine learning applications that lie outside of the “kill chain,” including logistics, system diagnostics and repair, and defensive cybersecurity.
• Focus R&D effort on increasing the predictability, robustness, and safety of ML systems.
• Share predictability and safety research with the wider academic and civilian research community.
• Focus on defensive cybersecurity (including fixing vulnerabilities in widespread platforms and civilian infrastructure) as a major strategic objective.
• Engage in military-to-military dialogue, and pursue memoranda of understanding and other instruments, agreements, or treaties to prevent the risks of accidental conflict, and accidental escalation.

Finally, Part III provides strategic questions to consider in the future that are intended to help the defense community contribute to building safe and controllable AI systems, rather than making vulnerable systems and processes that lead to regret in decades to come.

The full white paper can be found here (PDF)

What are your thoughts on the EFF’s whitepaper?

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AI is set to revolutionise many industries and will bring a range of benefits to citizens and businesses around the world. Concerns about job losses have been prevalent, but AI’s inevitable use in a military capacity has been less discussed.

Kersti Kaljulaid, President of Estonia, believes there is a 50 percent chance an AI system capable of launching a lethal attack will be created by the middle of this century. Despite some calls, there is no current international law to deter such a system from being developed.

Kaljulaid is calling for such boundaries to be established for areas such as the acceptable use of AI in combat scenarios. Where it’s suspected these boundaries have been crossed, then — similar to nuclear non-proliferation treaties — the international community should have the right to carry out inspections.

One standard being advocated by former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen is that AI can be used to enhance capabilities, but it must always involve human beings.

Rasmussen highlights three options:

1. Humans can always be in charge.
2. Humans can be in a supervisory role, and able to intervene.
3. Humans can leave the control up to the system.

“I’m in favour of trying to introduce legally binding [standards] that will prevent production and use of these kinds of autonomous lethal weapons,” says Rasmussen.

The international community needs to ensure these calls turn into actual laws before there’s a disaster prompting them.

When an unprecedented cyber attack was launched against Ukraine last year, NATO finally warned that it could trigger Article 5 which prompts a collective response. Just this week, the White House followed the British and Danish governments in blaming Russia for the attack.

According to Rasmussen, NATO practices ambiguity when it comes to its red lines. The idea is that if a potential threat doesn’t know where the line is, they won’t attempt to push their luck.

Defense chiefs are concerned about NATO being weakened. Within Europe, only the UK has consistently met its budget commitments. President Donald Trump has warned the U.S. will not continue to offer protection if other NATO members do not meet their obligations.

Trump has since reiterated the U.S.’ commitment to NATO. However, the European Union is currently under fire by the U.S. for its new PESCO (Permanent Structured Cooperation) defense agreement — which is accused of being protectionist and undermining NATO.

More than any time in recent history, coalitions like NATO must not be consumed by in-fighting and take a lead role in ensuring AI is only used to benefit mankind, not destroy it.

What are your thoughts on the leaders’ comments?

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Musk, co-chairman of OpenAI, has long warned of dire consequences for mishandling AI development. OpenAI itself is a non-profit research company that aims to champion promoting and developing friendly AI in a way to benefit humanity.

As with any major technology advancement, however, there will undoubtedly be those which aim to weaponise it and to do so before rivals. Based on Putin’s comments to Russia-based publication RT, it sounds as if the nation is among them.

“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind,” said Putin, in a report from RT. “It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”

Musk tweeted his brief reaction to the news:

It begins … https://t.co/mbjw5hWC5J

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2017

Further responses to his tweet highlighted the concern about AI weapon systems. In particular, an AI which may decide a preemptive strike is the best option to prevent a threat from developing. The lack of human involvement in the decision also enables the blame to be mitigated.

Last week, AI News reported that China is catching up to the U.S. in artificial intelligence. Part of this rapid development is due to a significant increase in government support of core AI programs. China will increase spending to $22 billion in the next few years, with plans to spend nearly $60 billion per year by 2025.

Musk has also voiced concerns about this international competition for AI superiority:

China, Russia, soon all countries w strong computer science. Competition for AI superiority at national level most likely cause of WW3 imo.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) September 4, 2017

These recent developments further highlight the pressing need for regulations and open dialogue on AI development to ensure it benefits humanity rather than poses a threat.

See more: Experts believe AI will be weaponised in the next 12 months

Are you concerned about AI posing a threat? Share your thoughts in the comments.

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