Discussing AI, Automated Systems, and the Future of War Seminar Series
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being incorporated into military decision-making in the form of decision-support systems (DSS). Such systems may offer data-informed suggestions to those responsible for making decisions regarding the resort to force. While DSS are not new in military contexts, we argue that AI-enabled DSS are sources of additional complexity in an already complex resort-to-force decision-making process that – by its very nature – presents the dual potential for both strategic stability and harm. We present three categories of complexity relevant to AI – interactive and nonlinear complexity, software complexity, and dynamic complexity – and examine how such categories introduce or exacerbate risks in resort-to-force decision-making. We then provide policy recommendations that aim to mitigate some of these risks in practice.
Speaker
Elizabeth Williams is a Nuclear Systems Discipline Lead in the School of Engineering at The Australian National University (ANU). She is a nuclear physicist by training, with a PhD in nuclear physics from Yale. She joined ANU in 2012 and has held an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellowship in nuclear reactions. Her current research focuses on the responsible integration of AI-enabled systems in safety-critical contexts.
Chair
Toni Erskine is Professor of International Politics in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The 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. She also currently serves as Academic Lead for the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific/Association of Pacific Rim Universities 'AI for the Social Good' Research Project and in this capacity works closely with government departments in Thailand and Bangladesh.
Acknowledgement
This paper was co-authored with Dr Zena Assaad, Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering at the Australian National University. She has held fellowships with the Australian Army Research Centre and Trusted Autonomous Systems. Her research explores the safety of human-machine teaming and the regulation and assurance of autonomous and AI systems. Dr Assaad is a Member of the expert advisory group for the Global Commission on Responsible AI in the Military Domain. While Dr Assaad is unable to join this seminar, her contributions to the research are gratefully acknowledged.
This seminar series is part of a 2.5-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.
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