make war
Hitting the Books: How American militarism and new technology may make war more likely
… AI and Machine Learning systems, automation and similar cutting-edge technologies, when paired with an increasingly rancorous and often …
Hitting the Books: How American militarism and new technology may make war more likely
There's nobody better at persecuting a war than the United States -- we've got the the best-equipped and biggest-budgeted fighting force on the face of the Earth. But does carrying the biggest stick still constitute a strategic advantage if the mere act of possessing it seems to make us more inclined to use it? In his latest book, Future Peace (sequel to 2017's Future War) Dr. Robert H. Latiff, Maj Gen USAF (Ret), explores how the American military's increasing reliance on weaponized drones, AI and Machine Learning systems, automation and similar cutting-edge technologies, when paired with an increasingly rancorous and often outright hostile global political environment, could create the perfect conditions for getting a lot of people killed. In the excerpt below, Dr. Latiff looks at the impact that America's lionization of its armed forces in the post-Vietnam era and new access to unproven tech have on our ability to mitigate conflict and prevent armed violence. Published by University of Notre Dame Press.
AI will make War a whole lot more hellish – Machine Learnings
An illegal connection might be detected from the vibrations caused by an outflow where one is not supposed to be… The idea is that [the AI tool] can be used to quickly narrow down the location of any water losses, allowing operators using geophones to pinpoint the exact site. In one case, in Votorantim, a city in São Paulo state, it would have taken the local water company two years to survey its network of pipes using two operators armed with geophones." He says it's situations like that which highlight differences between what is legal in the laws of war and what is morally right -- something that autonomous weapons might not distinguish. "That is one of the concerns that people raise about autonomous weapons is a lack of an ability to feel empathy and to engage in mercy in war. And that if we built these weapons, they would take away a powerful restraint in warfare that humans have."