-- In this paper, m ilitary use cases or applications and implementation thereof are considered for natural language processing and large language models, which have broken into fame with the invention of the generative pre - trained transformer (GPT) and the extensive foundation model pretraining done by OpenAI for ChatGPT and others . First, we interrogate a GPT - based language model (viz. Microsoft Copilot) to make it reveal its own knowledge about their potential military application s and then critically assess the information . Second, we study how commercial cloud services (viz. Microsoft Azure) could be used readily to build such applications and assess which of the m are feasible. We conclude that t he summarization and generative properties of language models directly facilitate many applications at large and other features may find particular uses . This paper was originally presented at the NATO Science and Technology Organization Symposium (ICMCIS) organized by ...

On Wednesday, officials and diplomats sounded the alarm on A.I.'s ability to undermine the integrity of information and fabricate fake voice and video tapes. They also warned that it posed a threat to cybersecurity and would enable the rise of autonomous weapons. Still, some argued that, if used responsibly and with guardrails, A.I. potentially could also help foster peace and stability. Secretary General António Guterres, who for the past year has championed efforts to regulate A.I., said that the Council had a responsibility to ensure the military use of artificial intelligence complies with international law and the U.N. Charter. "From design to deployment to decommissioning, A.I. systems must always comply with international law; military uses must be clearly regulated," Mr. Guterres said, before ending his speech with a warning and a call to action.

China this week chose not to sign onto an international "blueprint" agreed to by some 60 nations, including the U.S., that looked to establish guardrails when employing artificial intelligence (AI) for military use. More than 90 nations attended the Responsible Artificial Intelligence in the Military Domain (REAIM) summit hosted in South Korea on Monday and Tuesday, though roughly a third of the attendees did not support the nonbinding proposal. AI expert Arthur Herman, senior fellow and director of the Quantum Alliance Initiative with the Hudson Institute, told Fox News Digital that the fact some 30 nations opted out of this important development in the race to develop AI is not necessarily cause for concern, though in Beijing's case it is likely because of its general opposition to signing multilateral agreements. Participants are shown prior to the closing session of the REAIM summit in Seoul, South Korea, on Sept. 10, 2024. "What it boils down to … is China is always wary of any kind of international agreement in which it has not been the architect or involved in creating and organizing how that agreement is going to be shaped and implemented," he said.

Activists in Japan earlier this year accused one of the country's largest robotics manufacturers of profiting off the war in Gaza, accusing it of violating its own company policies in aiding the Israeli defense industry. At a protest outside the headquarters of FANUC Corporation earlier this summer, the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) protesters demanded the Japanese conglomerate cut off ties with Israel and all the defense companies that contribute to Israel's military. "We also call on FANUC not to be further complicit in genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity," Taizo Imano, one of the protest organizers, said in June. Specifically, Imano and the rest of the BDS activists believe Japan is breaching its own export controls. If true, it would significantly alter how Israel acquires high-end machinery for its defense sector.

When US President Joe Biden meets with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in the San Francisco Bay Area this week, the pair will have a long list of matters to discuss, including the Israel-Hamas war and Russia's ongoing invasion of Ukraine. Behind the scenes at the APEC summit, however, US officials hope to strike up a dialogue with China about placing guardrails around military use of artificial intelligence, with the ultimate goal of lessening the potential risks that rapid adoption--and reckless use--of the technology might bring. "We have a collective interest in reducing the potential risks from the deployment of unreliable AI applications," because of risks of unintended escalation, says a senior State Department official familiar with recent efforts to broach the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "We very much hope to have a further conversation with China on this issue." Biden's meeting with Xi this week may provide momentum for more military dialogue.

When politicians, tech executives, and researchers gathered in the UK last week to discuss the risks of artificial intelligence, one prominent worry was that algorithms might someday turn against their human masters. More quietly, the group made progress on controlling the use of AI for military ends. On November 1, at the US embassy in London, US vice president Kamala Harris announced a range of AI initiatives, and her warnings about the threat AI poses to human rights and democratic values got people's attention. But she also revealed a declaration signed by 31 nations to set guardrails around military use of AI. It pledges signatories to use legal reviews and training to ensure military AI stays within international laws, develop the technology cautiously and transparently, avoid unintended biases in systems that use AI, and continue to discuss how the technology can be developed and deployed responsibly.

The war in Ukraine, now into its 14th grueling month, has displaced millions, sparked global food shortages, and threatened to spiral into wider conflict. It has also highlighted how new technologies--especially ones drawn from the commercial sector--are upending conventional military doctrine. Ukraine has resisted and repelled Russia's much larger military force, thanks in large part to a willingness, borne of necessity, to adopt and experiment with novel technologies, not all of them originally designed for military use. I recently spoke with Ukraine's 32-year-old minister of digital transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, about the country's interest in tapping new technology to boost the war effort. Fedorov spoke over Zoom, via an interpreter, from an undisclosed location in Ukraine, about plans to produce more sophisticated drones and other autonomous systems, and to incubate military startups.

When it comes to advanced artificial intelligence, much of the debate has focused on whether white-collar workers are now facing the sort of extinction-level threat that the working class once did with robotics. And while it's suddenly likely that AI will be capable of duplicating a good part of what lawyers, accountants, teachers, programmers, and--yes--journalists do, that's not even where the most significant revolution is likely to occur. The latest AI--known as generative pre-trained transformers (GPT)--promises to utterly transform the geopolitics of war and deterrence. It will do so in ways that are not necessarily comforting, and which may even turn existential. On one hand, this technology could make war less lethal and possibly strengthen deterrence. By dramatically expanding the role of AI-directed drones in air forces, navies and armies, human lives could be spared.

With Russia's invasion of Ukraine as the backdrop, the United Nations recently held a meeting to discuss the use of autonomous weapons systems, commonly referred to as killer robots. These are essentially weapons that are programmed to find a class of targets, then select and attack a specific person or object within that class, with little human control over the decisions that are made. Russia took center stage in this discussion, in part because of its potential capabilities in this space, but also because its diplomats thwarted the effort to discuss these weapons, saying sanctions made it impossible to properly participate. For a discussion that to date had been far too slow, Russia's spoiling slowed it down even further. I have been tracking the development of autonomous weapons and attending the UN discussions on the issue for over seven years, and Russia's aggression is becoming an unfortunate test case for how artificial intelligence (AI)–fueled warfare can and likely will proceed.

Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age (AIDA), a special committee set up in September 2020 to analyse the horizontal impact of Artificial Intelligence on society, has concluded with its own-initiative report, adopted on Tuesday (22 March). The AIDA report had a rocky start, as progressive political groups criticised conservative rapporteur Axel Voss for the report's overall narrative. It was seen as too focused on international competition, where the EU was inevitably falling behind. After significant redrafting, the report was adopted with a vast majority in the parliamentary committee while maintaining the original emphasis on the potential benefits of the emerging technology. "The EU now has the unique chance to promote a human-centric and trustworthy approach to AI based on fundamental rights that manages risks while taking full advantage of the benefits AI can bring for the whole of society – including in healthcare, sustainability, the labour market, competitiveness and security," Voss said.