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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.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday April 26 2018, @12:58AM (1 child)
Let's not concentrate on an imminent invasion. Imminent economical catastrophe, such as credit cut in times of a crisis, is strong enough stimulus to go all out nuclear.
Back to the point, there is a very good thousand pages book written about basic impossibility of an all out war in modern society by a great economist Norman Angell. It was published two years before WWI. Highly recommended. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Illusion [wikipedia.org]
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 26 2018, @02:55PM
We are talking about an AI deciding about nuclear war, not a bout ambitious, egotistic, militaristic, absolutist rulers dreaming of pinning down other rulers and taking out their toys.
WWI was caused by irrational thinking and gambling, and that can always happen when reason has a back seat and has to give only Yes or No answers to stupid and loaded questions. WWI war operations and technology was still unable to make as massive and thorough destruction as is possible today. Should have Central Powers won the war, they would have had to sanitize only a limited strips of terrain and still acquire great territorial and industrial gains.
But this specific TFA is about AI decision-making. Of course, if you instruct AI to ignore aspects you don't like, and to optimize human-mandated partial irrational goal, then yes, it may advise the decision maker that the conditions awaited are satisfied at some point in time.
Furthermore, my (OK, since I am an AC, GP's) observation about destroying the goal still holds: If a credit is cut, burning the bank down won't conjure needed money out from the smoke. Countries don't require money, they require food, or goods, or materials for their industries, and loan just means "we want to pay for it in lots of chunks, starting after a while". So destroying all the goods they wish for, as well as probably the needed transportation assets to ship them over there, would be a step in wrong direction.