AI could start a nuclear war. But only if we let AI start a nuclear war

You might be tempted to put these pieces together and assume that AI might autonomously start a nuclear war. This is the subject of a new paper and article published today by the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit thinktank that researches national security as part of its Security 2040 initiative. But AI won't necessarily cause a nuclear war; no matter what AI fear-mongerer Elon Musk tweets out, artificial intelligence will only trigger a nuclear war if we decide to build artificial intelligence that can start nuclear wars. The RAND Corporation hosted a series of panels with mysterious, unnamed experts in the realms of national security, nuclear weaponry, and artificial intelligence to speculate and theorize on how AI might advance in the coming years and what that means for nuclear war. Much of the article talks about hyper-intelligent computers that would transform when a nation decides to launch its nuclear missiles.