At summit, AI dangers dwarf nuclear concerns

The dangers of AI eclipsed those of nuclear weapons at a defence forum discussion on strategic stability in Singapore, as panelists warned it could reduce reaction times to the point where people make rash decisions.

Collapsing the so-called "OODA loop" - an acronym for observe, orient, decide and act - creates a sort of fog in which "a human can't evaluate the situation fast enough," said Lieutenant General Nauman Zakria, Commander of 1 Corps and Army Rocket Force Command of the Pakistan army."People will act irrationally, and the actions will be extreme," he said Saturday during a discussion at the Shangri-La Dialogue.

Those concerns were echoed by the only panelist not directly involved in defence and security, Mirjana Spoljaric, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross. She warned that although technology had the capacity to improve lives, it also vastly increased the danger of war.

"We don't know where the trigger is pulled," Spoljaric said. "It could be thousands of kilometres away. So while there are potentials of AI for protecting civilians, what we see at the moment is only the negative side."

Nuclear weapons, the classic example of a strategic deterrent, still featured heavily in the conversation. People's Liberation Army Major General Meng Xiangqing reaffirmed China's no-first-use policy and added that if more countries adopted that position, the world would be a safer place. "If we can do so, we can reduce the risk and we can further enhance strategic stability," he said.

The conversation repeatedly circled back to artificial intelligence. General Onno Eichelsheim, the Netherlands' chief of defence, noted that such technology had already appeared on the battlefield as Ukrainians used it to anticipate Russian attacks. The US has also said it deployed AI in planning Iranian strikes.

"AI is a huge risk in escalation. I think that's clear," Eichelsheim said. "But I'm not naive. It'll be used in the domain. It is already being used."

(This is a Bloomberg story)
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