Artificial Intelligence and Global Security

Future Trends, Threats and Considerations

Yvonne R. Masakowski, Yvonne R. Masakowski

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781789738131
• Topic: Informatica
• Subtopic: Informatica generale

Artificial Intelligence and Global Security: Future Trends, Threats and Considerations brings a much-needed perspective on the impact of the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies in military affairs. Experts forecast that AI will shape future military operations in ways that will revolutionize warfare. That is why there is an urgent need to consider the potential ethical and moral consequences related to enabling AI to make decisions that will shape the future world.
This book masterfully presents a vision of a future that is replete with integrated networks of artificial intelligence that are designed to both defend and attack nations. Artificial Intelligence and Global Security: Future Trends, Threats and Considerations has rendered a major service to those interested in the impact of artificial intelligence technologies and its contribution to the evolution and revolution in military warfare. It also explores the implications of AI for the individual, for personal identity, for society, and for global security; it examines the impact of AI on Just War Theory; and it offers diverse perspectives on the consequences of the integration of AI in our daily lives and society.

Chapter 1

Artificial Intelligence and the Future Global Security Environment

Yvonne R. Masakowski

Abstract

Advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies and Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles are shaping our daily lives, society, and will continue to transform how we will fight future wars. Advances in AI technologies have fueled an explosion of interest in the military and political domain. As AI technologies evolve, there will be increased reliance on these systems to maintain global security. For the individual and society, AI presents challenges related to surveillance, personal freedom, and privacy. For the military, we will need to exploit advances in AI technologies to support the warfighter and ensure global security. The integration of AI technologies in the battlespace presents advantages, costs, and risks in the future battlespace. This chapter will examine the issues related to advances in AI technologies, as we examine the benefits, costs, and risks associated with integrating AI and autonomous systems in society and in the future battlespace.

Keywords: Artificial intelligence; future; autonomous; unmanned; decision-making; modeling; deep learning; military; strategy; tactics

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. –John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

Introduction

The next world war will not be focused on who fired the first shot. Rather, future warfare will be focused on the control and dissemination of information across all domains, including information about everything and everyone! AI networks will serve as the grid and blueprint of the new battlespace of the twenty-first century. Becoming the leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the key to achieving global dominance. Nations will use AI technological superiority to shape the geopolitical, social, and economic environment to their nation's strategic advantage. Nations will integrate AI technologies and networks across a wide spectrum of applications to expand and enhance their economic, geopolitical, and military agendas. Advances in AI will influence every phase of humanity and daily life, thereby impacting the individual, society, and shaping the battlespace of war.

As nations strive to address each of these global challenges, they seek to identify tools and technologies that will support them in their decisions during times of crises across a range of domains. We see AI being used today during the Global Pandemic in the development of models and surveillance systems to monitor people’s movements and travel patterns on a local and global level. Nations require information management tools that help to sort through the elements of crisis management, such as logistics, personnel management, supply chains, the distribution of goods, and technologies for maintaining regional security (Hamel & Green, 2007). Each of these topics requires a means of managing vast amounts of data and indeed, AI technologies excel at Big Data management (ICO, 2017). Advances in AI technologies will support both government and nongovernment agencies such as the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, to prepare and manage crises as they emerge. The United States, NATO, and its allied partners have identified AI technologies as critical for ensuring technological superiority and achieving the military strategic advantage (US Department of Defense, 2019; Masakowski, 2019d).

AI affords the military and nongovernment agencies the means of managing and analyzing large data sets and supporting decision-making at all levels (Tegmark, 2018). Indeed, there is a great deal of enthusiasm for the development of AI-enabled technologies to improve daily life and enhance warfare. AI technologies serve as a force multiplier for the military as it can streamline the information pipeline, analyze data, and accelerate the decision cycle. However, we contend that it is essential to keep the human-in-the-loop as they alone have the ability to understand context and integrate the nuances of contextual information across a wide domain of contributing factors that the AI system has yet to master (e.g., culture, organizational hierarchy, etc.).

AI technologies, to some extent, have been overpromised and underdelivered as people become excited about its capabilities and often misunderstand the complexities and limitations of AI systems. Simply stated, you can't buy a pound of AI and insert it like plaster in a crack in the wall. You have to first understand the problem and related issues within the context of the situation itself. This requires knowledge and understanding of the situation in which you want to deploy AI as part of a network, part of the organization, or merely augment a human decision-maker's thinking. One of the principal advantages for the military is to develop adaptive and agile AI networks that will facilitate information management during times of crises.

Distributed sensors collecting information across all domains including air, land, sea, undersea, and in space will be analyzed and managed by integrated and distributed AI networks. Satellites will be linked as information nodes within the grid of AI networks emanating across all domains and at all levels to capture data and attempt to make sense of it all. AI is the key to achieving global dominance for all nations seeking to control information across all domains to their strategic advantage! China and Russia have provided evidence for this objective in their national strategic strategies.

China has put its stake in the ground stating that it aims to be the global leader of AI technologies by 2030 and is well on its way to make good with its claim (Allen, 2019; Chan & Lee, 2018; China State Council, 2017; Dai & Shen, 2018). China has invested heavily in AI technologies for numerous applications, from facial recognition for identity management, population control, resource management (i.e., water, minerals, materials, etc.) to manufacturing applications. China has provided further evidence of the potential impact of AI technologies on society and global security.

Likewise, Russia has invested in AI to shape their global political and strategic objectives. Their nation is investing in AI to weaponize information to their political and strategic advantage. Regardless of our personal or political views, the fact is that AI technologies have facilitated new, advanced capabilities. The question is: What type of future do we want to create? How can democratic nations use AI technologies to ensure global security?

Advances in AI technologies will provide a means of safeguarding a stable environment in which the national security strategy, productivity, and economic progress is ensured. Indeed, national strategies are designed to ensure economic and geopolitical stability. In the book, Future Smart , we are advised about game-changing trends that will shape the future of business and warfare. (Canton, 2015). Canton highlights the similarities between current advances in AI technologies with those innovations and inventions of the Industrial Revolution. He posits that AI will influence and accelerate the development of AI technologies across a wide range of domains including medicine, manufacturing, and warfighting (Canton, 2015). He further hypothesizes that the impact of AI will be further accelerated by the integration of quantum computing, as well as advances in batteries, and materials. One can extrapolate from this hypothesis that the integration of AI advances with new materials, batteries, and computing power will only expand and enhance its capabilities. Time to decide and act will grow shorter with each advance! Each advance in AI technology and computing power increases the level of risk in global security as advances will present new and unanticipated challenges to maintain global security.

China is aware of these benefits and has already integrated AI technologies in the design of what they call, Intelligentization of design (Zhou, 2013). Shifting from innovation to intelligentization refers to the fact that new systems and technologies being designed will be integrated with a level of intelligence that will make them safer, more reliable, self-sustaining, and just plain smarter than previously thought. For example, the design of a locomotive that has been integrated with AI intelligence affords it increased capabilities of being self-aware, self-learning, self-maintaining, and ensures network connectivity and communication that makes the locomotive safer, more reliable, and cost-effective. Like the Industrial Revolution, we anticipate that intelligentized systems will continue to expand and contribute to a network of self-sustaining, automated systems capable of manufacturing a host of products, technologies, systems, and tools of war.

We recognize that AI is having an impact on society, politics, economics, and gains in manufacturing capabilities. Advances in AI are also having significant effects on the battlespace and twenty-first century warfare. AI networks have accelerated the decision cycle for the warfighter and for the adversary. AI networks and intelligent agents can quickly detect, collect and analyze data to inform decisions and make recommendations for the benefit of the decision maker. However, these same capabilities may also prove to be a weapon in the hands of the adversary. The real advantage democratic nations have is its people. From the American Revolution through the Space race, the human spirit has launched mankind into new territories. This time is no different. Humans have a pioneering spirit and adapt quickly to change. This is such a time that calls for adaptation and innovation.

For the twenty-first century is a time rife with opportunity, complexity, and uncertainty. We must acknowledge that global security rests not on an individual nation but requires all nations to consider working together collaboratively to achieve a sense of collective security for all its members. There are challenges and concerns regarding trusting the source of data and determining whether the information received is trustworthy. It is essential that democratic nations work together to ensure that trust and truth are the essential ingredients of AI networks and systems to ensure global security. Indeed, nations must reckon with issues related to national sovereignty that, up until now, prohibited them from sharing historical database and information that is proprietary. However, if we are to ensure global security; then, nations must work collaboratively and cooperatively to achieve unity of effort to ensure the security of our world. There will be a trade space in which nations must contribute to the greater good of maintaining global situation awareness (GSA) if they are to ensure global security. “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety deserve neither Liberty nor Safety” (Franklin, 1776).

Advances in AI present a paradigm shift for nations to be assured of controlling their national security agenda. Nations must collectively defend against future adversaries as their collective security to safeguard their individual national security agendas will depend upon it. The responsibility for ensuring and safeguarding national agendas will necessarily be a collective venture between nations across the private and public sectors. This collective investment is due to the tremendous investment it will take to ensure that nations have AI systems in place that can detect behaviors, if not anticipate, adversarial intent before negative events occur! Anticipatory and predictive AI networks and agents must be developed if we are to be agile and adaptive in this new complex and uncertain global security environment.

AI networks facilitate cyberwarfare and the weaponization and manipulation of information presenting cyber threats that raise serious challenges and concerns for ensuring global and national security. The question is: How will AI be used to shape future governments and future generations? How will we defend our nation in the cyberspace of the future to secure global security? For now, we are at the intersection of innovation, intelligentization, and an evolution and revolution of AI networks and system designs that present opportunities and challenges, each of which may have grave consequences for mankind. It is apparent to some of us that corporate and government defense organizations must work together if we are to be successful in ensuring a secure future for all.

Future AI networks and systems will be used to shape the global security landscape. Indeed, AI dominance will ensure a nation's global geopolitical and economic dominance as they attain control of the information environment and its resources across all domains, air, land, sea, undersea, and most especially, space. China and Russia recognize the military gain in this regard. There is no time to waste for nations including NATO and its Allied partners to invest in AI technologies as a means of ensuring global security.

If nations (NATO, Allied partners, etc.) are to remain adaptive and agile, we must develop AI systems that are anticipative and predictive. Future AI situational awareness (SA) systems will play a pivotal role in providing nations with the decision advantage. We no longer will have the luxury of time. It took approximately 22 minutes to rally a military response to 911 attacks. Today, we have less time to respond and far less time to understand the complexities of the situation. AI technology and networks can reduce the time and accelerate the decision cycle to ensure global security.

Investment in AI technologies will provide the military strategic advantage that is essential for global security. Intuitive AI systems, designed with adaptive neural networks and machine learning algorithms, will detect intent and forecast events in the future. Automated bots, adaptive computer algorithms, and smart systems will transform business and warfare. Disseminated sensors, embedded from sea floor to satellites in space, will facilitate global situational awareness (GSA) with predictive capabilities. AI technological superiority will support nations who collaborate and cooperate with each other to ensure global security. This will take the political will of those leaders who wish to gain the strategic advantage and those who make decisions regarding sharing of national information to achieve a common understanding of a complex and uncertain environment.

Today's operational environment has become more complex as a result of advances in AI, and AI-enabled technologies such as robotics and Autonomous Unmanned Vehicles (AUVs) and systems. Indeed, the character of warfare has been transformed by the emergence and utilization of AI networks and unmanned autonomous systems including AUVs and Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV) systems. These AI-enabled system designs have expanded our SA in the battlespace with extensive networks of sensors from sea floor to space satellites. The information garnered from these distributed sensor networks has been collated and analyzed by AI networks to facilitate more effective mission planning and execution (Finne...