This 2023 John Gee Memorial Lecture will be delivered by Professor Toni Erskine. 

War is changing rapidly – and with it the challenge of ensuring that restraint is exercised in both the resort to force and its conduct. Lethal autonomous weapons systems are able to select and engage targets, with and without human authorisation. Algorithms that rely on big data analytics and machine learning recommend targets for drone strikes and will increasingly infiltrate state-level decision-making on whether to wage war. The spectre of future iterations of these intelligent machines surpassing human capacities, and escaping human control, has recently received a surge in attention as an approaching existential threat. Yet, this future-focused fear obscures a grave and insidious challenge that is already here.

A neglected danger that already-existing AI-enabled weapons and decision-support systems pose is that they change how we (as citizens, soldiers, and states) deliberate, how we act, and how we view ourselves as responsible agents. This has potentially profound ethical, political, and even geo-political implications – well before AI evolves to a point where some fear that it could initiate algorithmic Armageddon. Professor Erskine will argue that our reliance on AI-enabled and automated systems in war threatens to create the perception that we have been displaced as the relevant decision-makers and may therefore abdicate our responsibilities to intelligent machines. She will conclude by asking how these risks might, in turn, affect hard-won international norms of restraint – and how they can be mitigated.

About the speaker

Toni Erskine is Professor of International Politics in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at The Australian National University (ANU) and Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University. She is also Chief Investigator of the Defence-funded ‘Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making’ Research Project and a Founding Member and Chief Investigator of the ‘Humanising Machine Intelligence’ Grand Challenge at ANU. She serves as Academic Lead for the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UN ESCAP)/Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) ‘AI for the Social Good’ Research Project and in this capacity works closely with government departments in Thailand and Bangladesh. Her research interests include the impact of new technologies (particularly AI) on organised violence; the moral agency and responsibility of formal organisations in world politics; the ethics of war; the responsibility to protect vulnerable populations from mass atrocity crimes (‘R2P’); and the role of joint purposive action and informal coalitions in response to global crises. She is currently completing a book entitled Locating Responsibility: Institutional Moral Agency in a World of Existential Threats and is the recipient of the International Studies Association’s 2024 International Ethics Distinguished Scholar Award.

 

About John Gee

Dr John Gee AO served with distinction as an Australian diplomat in a number of countries. His greatest contribution, however, was in the field of disarmament, where he had a particular interest in chemical weapons. After a period as a Commissioner on the United Nations Special Commission on Iraq following the first Gulf War, he became Deputy Director-General of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons in The Hague, serving there until 2003. In recognition of his achievements, Dr Gee was made a member of the Order of Australia in January 2007. Gee leaves behind a legacy and a memory of a great Australian.


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DISCUSSING AI, AUTOMATED SYSTEMS AND THE FUTURE OF WAR SEMINAR SERIES

This seminar series is part of a two-year (2023-2025) research project on Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making, generously funded by the Australian Department of Defence and led by Professor Toni Erskine from the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs.

How should states balance the benefits and risks of employing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in nuclear command and control systems? Dr Ben Zala will argue that it is only by placing developments in AI against the larger backdrop of the increasing prominence of a much wider set of strategic non-nuclear capabilities that this question can be adequately addressed. In order to do so, he will make the case for disaggregating the different risks that AI poses to stability as well as examine the specific ways in which it may instead be harnessed to restabilise nuclear-armed relationships. Dr Zala will also identify a number of policy areas that ought to be prioritised by way of mitigating the risks and harnessing the opportunities identified in the short-medium term. 
 

About the speaker
Ben Zala is a Fellow in the Department of International Relations, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at ANU. His work focuses on the politics of the great powers and the management of nuclear weapons. He has been a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at Harvard University and is currently an Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester, UK contributing to the Third Nuclear Age project (https://thethirdnuclearage.com/).


About the chair
Toni Erskine is Professor of International Politics in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University (ANU), and Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University. She is Chief Investigator of the Defence-funded 'Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making' Research Project and a Chief Investigator and Founding Member of the 'Humanising Machine Intelligence' Grand Challenge at ANU.


If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please contact bell.marketing@anu.edu.au.