Wired magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly has argued that it “will enliven inert objects, much as electricity did more than a century ago. 6 General-purpose technologies like AI have applications across a range of industries. It is more like electricity, the internal combustion engine, or computer networks. AI is a general-purpose enabling technology with myriad applications. Current Military AI Competition Is Not an “Arms Race”Īs Heather Roff has written, the arms race framing “misrepresents the competition going on among countries.” 5 To begin with, AI is not a weapon. There are concrete steps nations can take to mitigate some of these dangers. Even if fears of an “AI arms race” are overblown, military AI competition brings real risks to which nations should attend. Additionally, perceptions of a “race” to field AI systems before competitors do could cause nations to cut corners on testing, leading to the deployment of unsafe AI systems that are at risk of accidents that could cause unintended escalation or destruction. The widespread adoption of military AI could cause warfare to evolve in a manner that leads to less human control and to warfare becoming faster, more violent, and more challenging in terms of being able to manage escalation and bring a war to an end. Military AI competition nevertheless does pose risks. While nations are clearly competing to develop and adopt AI technology for military use, the character of that competition does not meet the traditional definition of an arms race. The so-called AI arms race has become a common feature in news headlines, 4 but the arms race framing fails to match reality. Air Force, warned of the risks of falling behind in a “digital arms race with China.” 3 In 2018, then-Under Secretary of Defense Michael Griffin, calling for the United States to invest more in AI, stated, “There might be an artificial intelligence arms race, but we’re not yet in it.” 2 In a 2020 Wired article, Will Roper, then chief acquisition officer for the U.S.
If any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable.” 1 Today, many nations are working to apply AI for military advantage, and the term “AI arms race” has become a catchphrase used by both critics and proponents of AI militarization.
“The key question for humanity today,” they wrote, “is whether to start a global AI arms race or to prevent it from starting. In 2015, a group of prominent AI and robotics researchers signed an open letter warning of the dangers of autonomous weapons.
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