AI will allow you to control the battlefield: will the Third World War begin through neural networks

Artificial intelligence will certainly affect international relations and military affairs. In the Bloomberg column, analyst Hel Brands raises five key questions related to it - and answers them, trying to avoid apocalyptic scenarios.

Artificial intelligence will change our daily life in countless ways: how governments serve their citizens; as we go (and we are being taken); As we manage and, as we hope, we protect our finances; how doctors diagnose and treat the disease; Even how my students explore and write their essays.

But how revolutionary will she be? Will this break the global balance of strength? Will this allow autocrats to rule the world? Will it make the war so fast and cruel that it will become uncontrollable? In short, will AI change the fundamentally rhythms of world events? Of course, it is too early to speak unambiguously: the consequences of AI will eventually depend on decisions made by leaders and countries, and technologies sometimes make unexpected turns.

But even though the next version of Chatgpt is surprising and disturbing, we need to deal with deeper issues about international relations in the artificial intelligence. And we need to consider the amazing opportunity: perhaps AI will not change the world as much as we expect. Consider one statement: artificial intelligence will make the conflict more deadly and it will be more difficult to hold back.

Analysts provide for a future in which machines will be able to pilot fighters more skillfully than humans, cyberattacks with the help of artificial intelligence destroy enemy networks, and advanced algorithms accelerate the speed of decision making. Some people warn that automated decision making can provoke an escalation - even nuclear escalation. If military plans and railways were the cause of the First World War, the AI ​​may cause the Third World War.

The fact that AI will change the war is undeniable. Opportunities are huge: from providing preventive equipment maintenance to incredible improvements in accurate targeting. One F-35, which protects the swarm of semi-autonomous drones, can have a fire power of the bombing squadron. As the conclusion in 2021 was made by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, the new era of conflict will be dominated by a party that has mastered "new ways of war.

" But there is nothing fundamentally new here. For centuries, the history of wars is a story in which innovations regularly make the battle faster and more intense. So think twice before agreeing with the statement that AI will make the escalation uncontrolled.

The US and China discussed the agreement not to automate their nuclear command and control processes for the simple reason that states have strong incentives not to refuse control of weapons, the use of which can jeopardize their own survival. The behavior of Russia, including the development of torpedoes with nuclear warheads, which will eventually be able to work autonomously.

But even during the Cold War, when Moscow created a system designed to provide a nuclear stroke, even if its leadership is destroyed, it never turned off human control. In fact, AI can reduce the risk of dizzying escalation, helping persons who make decisions through the fog of crisis and war.

The Pentagon believes that artificial intelligence intelligence and analytical tools can help people understand the confined or fragmentary information about the preparation of the enemy for war or even whether a dangerous rocket attack is really underway. This is not a science fiction: it is reported that the help of AI helped analysts in American intelligence to find the invasion of Russian President Vladimir Putin into Ukraine in 2022.

In this sense, AI can mitigate uncertainty and fear that push people to extreme reactions. By giving politicians a better understanding of events, AI can also improve their ability to control them. What about this nightmare - that AI will help the forces of tyranny to control the future? Analysts, such as Julya Noah Harari, warn that artificial intelligence will reduce costs and increase the return on repression.

Intelligence services equipped with artificial intelligence will need less labor for deciphering the huge volumes of intelligence that they collect about their population, which will allow them, for example, to accurately make a map and ruthlessly destroy protest networks. They will use the technology of faces with the support of AI to observe and control their citizens, while using the created AI misinformation to discredit critics inside the country and abroad.

By increasing the efficiency of autocracy, AI can allow dictators to dominate the first stage. This is definitely what China hopes for. The President Si Government has developed a "social loan" system that uses artificial intelligence, faces recognition and large data to ensure the reliability of its citizens, regulating their access to everything: from low interest loans to plane tickets.

Widespread observation with the help of artificial intelligence has transformed Cinziang into an anti -utopian model of modern repression. Beijing intends to capture "strategic command heights" innovations because it believes that AI can strengthen its internal system and military power. He uses the power of the non -liberal state to direct money and talents for advanced technologies. However, it is not the fact that autocracy will escape.

To believe that AI is fundamentally supporting autocratia, means to believe that some of the most important and ancient factors that contribute to innovation, such as open information flows and tolerance to dissent, are no longer so important. However, autocracy already limits China's potential. Creating powerful large language models requires huge amounts of information.

But if these data are spoiled or biased due to the rigid censorship of the Chinese Internet, the quality of the results will be affected. The more and more repressive system will also fight over time for attracting the best talents: it is significant that 38% of leading artificial intelligence researchers in the United States are originally from China.

And intelligent technologies, as before, should be used by government institutes of China, which are becoming less intelligent - that is, less technocratically competent - as the political system becomes an increasingly subordinate life emperor. China will become a terrible technological competitor. But even in the artificial intelligence of SI and its non -liberal brothers, they can try hard to avoid resistance to competition, which creates autocracy.

Some technologies reduce the gap between the most and least technologically developed societies. Nuclear weapons, for example, enables Outsiders such as North Korea to compensate for the military and economic benefits that the superpower and its allies possess. In a sense, the AI ​​will aggravate the weak. US officials are concerned that large language models can help terrorists create biological weapons.

Iran countries, such as Iran, can use AI to coordinate drones against US warships in the Persian Gulf. It is more favorable that AI can expand access to basic medical services in the global south, creating great benefits in the form of an increase in life expectancy and economic productivity. However, in other respects, the AI ​​will be the fate of the rich. The development of modern artificial intelligence is fantastically expensive.

Training of large language models can require huge investments and access to a limited number of leading scientists and engineers, not to mention the stunning volume of electricity. Some estimates, the cost of an infrastructure that supports Microsoft Bing AI chatbot is $ 4 billion. Almost everyone can become a CI user, but in order to become its creator, huge resources are needed.

That is why the average states that take major steps in artificial intelligence, such as Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates, have very deep pockets. Many of the first leaders in the AI ​​are either technological titans (Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta, IBM, NVIDIA and others), or companies with access to their money (Openai). And the United States, with their dynamic, well -financed technological sector, is still leading in the field.

What is true in the private sector can be true in the field of war. At the initial stage, military benefits from new technologies can be disproportionate to countries with generous defense budgets needed to develop and use new opportunities on a large scale. All this can change: early leadership does not always lead to persistent advantages. Strappings, whether firms or countries, have already been revolutionized by other industries.

However, at this point, the AI ​​can strengthen faster than revolutionize the balance of power. The way artificial intelligence affects the balance of power depends on how it affects global coalitions. According to analysts at the University of Security and New Technology Center, the US and their allies can significantly outstrip China in the cost of advanced technologies - but only if they combine their resources. The greatest hope of Beijing is that the free world will split through the si.

This probability is. Washington is concerned about the fact that a new approach of Europe to the generative regulation of AI can straighten innovations: in this sense, the AI ​​emphasizes differences in the approaches of the US and Europe to markets and risks. Another key democracy, India, prefers strategic autonomy rather than a strategic union: in technology, as in geopolitics, it prefers to go its own way.

Meanwhile, some of Washington's undemocratic partners, namely Saudi Arabia and UAE, consider the possibility of closer technological connections with Beijing. But to conclude that AI is fundamentally blowing up the US alliances, prematurely. In some cases, the United States successfully use these alliances as technological competition tools: see how Washington persuaded Japan and the Netherlands to limit China's access to high quality semiconductors.

The United States also uses partnerships in safety with Saudi Arabia and the UAE to limit their technological relations with Beijing and promote partnership in artificial intelligence between American and Emirate firms. In this sense, geopolitical schedules determine the development of AI, not the other way around. At a more fundamental level, the advantages of the countries over the AI ​​are related to their preferences on domestic and international order.

Thus, whatever differences between the US and Europe, they can be liable compared to their common fears about what happens if China reaches domination. Europe and America can eventually find a path to closer cooperation on artificial intelligence - just as the total hostility to the power of the United States is pushed by China and Russia to closely cooperate in the field of military use of this technology today.

Many of these issues are related to how the AI ​​will affect the intensity of competition between the West, headed by the United States, and autocratic countries headed by China. No one really knows whether the unrestrained AI can truly threaten humanity. But common existential risks sometimes become strange partners. During the first Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union cooperated to cope with the dangers of nuclear weapons.

During the new Cold War, Washington and Beijing may find a common goal-to prevent the use of AI with malicious purposes, such as bio-terrorism or other threats to countries on both sides of today's geopolitical differences. However, this analogy is bilateral, since nuclear weapons also made a "cold war" more acute and terrible. Washington and Moscow had to endure high rates, such as the Caribbean crisis in Cuba and a few crises in Berlin before the shaky stability was established.

Thus, even though the United States and China are starting to emerge, in the field of AI, technology increases their competition. Artificial intelligence is in the center of the Chinese-American technological war, as China uses honest and dishonest methods to accelerate its own development, and the US is using export control, investment restrictions and other measures to block Beijing. If China is unable to accelerate its technological progress, SI says, it risks being "strangled" Washington.

AI also fues the fight for the military advantage in the western Pacific: the Pentagon Replicator initiative involves the use of thousands of drones with the support of the AI ​​to destroy the Chinese fleet heading for Taiwan. Duelanters can eventually find ways of cooperation, perhaps silent, about the mutual dangers that are AI. But the technology of transformation in the future will strengthen many aspects of their rivalry.

*** We cannot predict the future: AI can go to a dead end or accelerate, exceeding someone's expectation. Moreover, technology is not an autonomous power. Its development and consequences will be determined by decisions in Washington and around the world. The main thing is to ask the right questions, because it helps us to understand the rates of these decisions. It helps us to imagine what the future can form. Last but not least, it shows that the AI ​​may not cause a geopolitical earthquake.

Of course, there are reasons to be afraid that the AI ​​will make the war uncontrolled, violate the balance of power, destroy the US alliances or fundamentally prefer autocratia over democracies. But there are also good reasons to suspect that this will not happen. This is not a call for self -esteem. Preventing more dangerous consequences will require energetic effort and reasonable choice. Indeed, the basic value of this exercise is to show that a very wide range of scripts is possible.

She prefers autocracy or democracy, partly depends on whether the United States has an educated immigration policy that helps them accumulate the best talents. Whether AI will strengthen or destroy the US alliance depends on whether Washington will be treated with these alliances as assets to be protected, or as a burden to get rid of. Whether AI will support an existing international hierarchy or undermine it depends on how wise the US and other countries regulate its development and use.