AI Is Here to Replace Nuclear Treaties. The last major nuclear arms treaty between the US and Russia just expired. Some experts believe a combination of satellite surveillance, AI, and human reviewers can take its place. For half a century, the world's nuclear powers relied on an intricate and complex series of treaties that slowly and steadily reduced the number of nuclear weapons on the planet. Those treaties are gone now, and it doesn't appear that they'll be coming back anytime soon.

Tom Newhouse, vice president of Convergence Media, discusses the potential impact of artificial intelligence on elections after an RNC AI ad garnered attention. A Marine veteran lawmaker says the U.S. should be pushing for a new international agreement to govern the use of artificial intelligence on the battlefield and believes it's a "strategic mistake" the Pentagon hasn't started this important task. Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., said the U.S. needs to work with other military powers to flesh out rules of the road on how AI can and cannot be deployed by military forces before AI becomes much more advanced. "When we get to the point of having killer robots, it's going to be a real problem for us if we don't have some established international norms for their use," Moulton told Fox News Digital. "Adversaries like China and Russia -- which don't care about collateral damage, they don't care about civilian casualties, they don't care about human rights -- they're going to have an advantage in making their robots more lethal because they'll be less constrained."

The TechCrunch Global Affairs Project examines the increasingly intertwined relationship between the tech sector and global politics. Geopolitical actors have always used technology to further their goals. Unlike other technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) is far more than a mere tool. We do not want to anthropomorphize AI or suggest that it has intentions of its own. It is not -- yet -- a moral agent.

In 2018 the United Nations Secretary-General identified responsible research and innovation (RRI) in science and technology as an approach for academia, the private sector and governments to work on the mitigation of risks that are posed by new technologies. This report explores how RRI could help to address the humanitarian and strategic risks that may result from the development, diffusion and military use of artificial intelligence (AI) and thereby achieve arms control objectives on the military use of AI. The report makes recommendations on how the arms control community could build on existing responsible AI initiatives and export control and compliance systems to engage with academia and the private sector in the governance of risks to international peace and security posed by the military use of AI. Luke Richards is a Research Assistant working on emerging military and security technologies. Kolja Brockmann is a Researcher in the SIPRI Dual-Use and Arms Trade Control programme.

Artificial intelligence (AI) -- defined by John McCarthy, one of the doyens of AI, as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines" -- is slowly gaining relevance in the military domain. While commercial use of AI is widening, there are only three countries that are reported to be developing serious military AI technologies: the United States, China and Russia. AI promises a significant military advantage to a nation's offensive and defensive military capabilities. AI now has the capacity to be merged with sophisticated but untried, new weaponry, such as offensive cyber capabilities. This is an alarming development, as it has the potential to destabilize the balance of military power among the leading industrial nations.

IF you find the use of remotely piloted warrior drones troubling, imagine that the decision to kill a suspected enemy is not made by an operator in a distant control room, but by the machine itself. Imagine that an aerial robot studies the landscape below, recognizes hostile activity, calculates that there is minimal risk of collateral damage, and then, with no human in the loop, pulls the trigger. Welcome to the future of warfare. While Americans are debating the president's power to order assassination by drone, powerful momentum -- scientific, military and commercial -- is propelling us toward the day when we cede the same lethal authority to software. Next month, several human rights and arms control organizations are meeting in London to introduce a campaign to ban killer robots before they leap from the drawing boards.