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posted by janrinok on Wednesday April 25 2018, @12:36PM   Printer-friendly
from the learn-to-love-the-bomb dept.

A new RAND Corporation paper finds that artificial intelligence has the potential to upend the foundations of nuclear deterrence by the year 2040.

While AI-controlled doomsday machines are considered unlikely, the hazards of artificial intelligence for nuclear security lie instead in its potential to encourage humans to take potentially apocalyptic risks, according to the paper.

During the Cold War, the condition of mutual assured destruction maintained an uneasy peace between the superpowers by ensuring that any attack would be met by a devastating retaliation. Mutual assured destruction thereby encouraged strategic stability by reducing the incentives for either country to take actions that might escalate into a nuclear war.

The new RAND publication says that in coming decades, artificial intelligence has the potential to erode the condition of mutual assured destruction and undermine strategic stability. Improved sensor technologies could introduce the possibility that retaliatory forces such as submarine and mobile missiles could be targeted and destroyed. Nations may be tempted to pursue first-strike capabilities as a means of gaining bargaining leverage over their rivals even if they have no intention of carrying out an attack, researchers say. This undermines strategic stability because even if the state possessing these capabilities has no intention of using them, the adversary cannot be sure of that.

"The connection between nuclear war and artificial intelligence is not new, in fact the two have an intertwined history," said Edward Geist, co-author on the paper and associate policy researcher at the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization. "Much of the early development of AI was done in support of military efforts or with military objectives in mind."

[...] Under fortuitous circumstances, artificial intelligence also could enhance strategic stability by improving accuracy in intelligence collection and analysis, according to the paper. While AI might increase the vulnerability of second-strike forces, improved analytics for monitoring and interpreting adversary actions could reduce miscalculation or misinterpretation that could lead to unintended escalation.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Virindi on Wednesday April 25 2018, @04:36PM

    by Virindi (3484) on Wednesday April 25 2018, @04:36PM (#671690)

    This is also dead on.

    Additionally: There is no way even the best AI is going to be able to give you 100% certainty of hitting every enemy weapon. So, any first strike comes with a nonzero chance of retaliation. There is little reason to take this risk except in the last stand kind of scenario, as you said.

    And even if you DO win, the entire rest of the world is going to turn against that one country that launched a nuclear first strike. Good luck with that one.

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