Artificial Intelligence And The Future Of Defense Strategic Implications For Small And Medium Sized Force Providers

Artificial intelligence (AI) is on everybody’s minds these days. Most of the world’s leading companies are making massive investments in it. Governments are scrambling to catch up. Every single one of us who uses Google Search or any of the new digital assistants on our smartphones has witnessed first-hand how quickly these developments now go. Many analysts foresee truly disruptive changes in education, employment, health, knowledge generation, mobility, etc. But what will AI mean for defense and security? In a new study HCSS offers a unique perspective on this question. Most studies to date quickly jump from AI to autonomous (mostly weapon) systems. They anticipate future armed forces that mostly resemble today’s armed forces, engaging in fairly similar types of activities with a still primarily industrial-kinetic capability bundle that would increasingly be AI-augmented. The authors of this study argue that AI may have a far more transformational impact on defense and security whereby new incarnations of ‘armed force’ start doing different things in novel ways. The report sketches a much broader option space within which defense and security organizations (DSOs) may wish to invest in successive generations of AI technologies. It suggests that some of the most promising investment opportunities to start generating the sustainable security effects that our polities, societies and economies expect may lie in in the realms of prevention and resilience. Also in those areas any large-scale application of AI will have to result from a preliminary open-minded (on all sides) public debate on its legal, ethical and privacy implications. The authors submit, however, that such a debate would be more fruitful than the current heated discussions about ‘killer drones’ or robots. Finally, the study suggests that the advent of artificial super-intelligence (i.e. AI that is superior across the board to human intelligence), which many experts now put firmly within the longer-term planning horizons of our DSOs, presents us with unprecedented risks but also opportunities that we have to start to explore. The report contains an overview of the role that ‘intelligence’ - the computational part of the ability to achieve goals in the world - has played in defense and security throughout human history; a primer on AI (what it is, where it comes from and where it stands today - in both civilian and military contexts); a discussion of the broad option space for DSOs it opens up; 12 illustrative use cases across that option space; and a set of recommendations for - especially - small- and medium sized defense and security organizations.

This book offers a comprehensive approach to the question of how artificial intelligence (AI) impacts politics, economy, and the society today. In this view, it is quintessential for understanding the complex nature of AI and its role in today’s world. The book has been divided into three parts. Part one is devoted to the question of how AI will be used for security and defense purposes, including combat in war zones. Part two looks at the value added of AI and machine learning for decision-making in the fields of politics and business. Part three consists of case studies—covering the EU, the USA, Saudi Arabia, Portugal, and Poland—that discuss how AI is being used in the realms of politics, security and defense. The discussion in the book opens with the question of the nature of AI, as well as of ethics and the use of AI in combat. Subsequently, the argument covers issues as diverse as the militarization of AI, the use of AI in strategic studies and military strategy design. These topics are followed by an insight into AI and strategic communication (StratCom), including disinformation, as well as into AI and finance. The case-studies included in part 3 of the book offer a captivating overview of how AI is being employed to stimulate growth and development, to promote data- and evidence-driven policy-making, to enable efficient and inclusive digital transformation and other related issues. Written by academics and practitioners in an academically sound, yet approachable manner, this volume queries issues and topics that form the thrust of processes that transform world politics, economics and society. As such, this volume will serve as the primer for students, researchers, lectures and other professionals who seek to understand and engage with the variety of issues AI implicates.

National intelligence agencies have long adjusted to the opportunities and threats from new technologies, and have created structures, concepts, and practices to best apply new capabilities. But such recent technological developments as artificial intelligence are different in kind. Increasingly affordable to nongovernmental actors, they are powerful enough to overwhelm and marginalize much of what agencies do. In The Future of National Intelligence: How Emerging Technologies Reshape Intelligence Communities, Shay Hershkovitz argues that only with a new paradigm can these agencies take up this fundamentally new technological challenge.

This book highlights the latest technologies and applications of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the domain of construction engineering and management. The construction industry worldwide has been a late bloomer to adopting digital technology, where construction projects are predominantly managed with a heavy reliance on the knowledge and experience of construction professionals. AI works by combining large amounts of data with fast, iterative processing, and intelligent algorithms (e.g., neural networks, process mining, and deep learning), allowing the computer to learn automatically from patterns or features in the data. It provides a wide range of solutions to address many challenging construction problems, such as knowledge discovery, risk estimates, root cause analysis, damage assessment and prediction, and defect detection. A tremendous transformation has taken place in the past years with the emerging applications of AI. This enables industrial participants to operate projects more efficiently and safely, not only increasing the automation and productivity in construction but also enhancing the competitiveness globally.

This book focuses on the legal regulation, mainly from an international law perspective, of autonomous artificial intelligence systems, of their creations, as well as of the interaction of human and artificial intelligence. It examines critical questions regarding both the ontology of autonomous AI systems and the legal implications: what constitutes an autonomous AI system and what are its unique characteristics? How do they interact with humans? What would be the implications of combined artificial and human intelligence? It also explores potentially the most important questions: what are the implications of these developments for collective security –from both a state-centered and a human perspective, as well as for legal systems? Why is international law better positioned to make such determinations and to create a universal framework for this new type of legal personality? How can the matrix of obligations and rights of this new legal personality be construed and what would be the repercussions for the international community? In order to address these questions, the book discusses cognitive aspects embedded in the framework of law, offering insights based on both de lege lata and de lege ferenda perspectives.

This book argues that ethical evaluation of AI should be an integral part of public service ethics and that an effective normative framework is needed to provide ethical principles and evaluation for decision-making in the public sphere, at both local and international levels. It introduces how the tenets of prudential rationality ethics, through critical engagement with intersectionality, can contribute to a more successful negotiation of the challenges created by technological innovations in AI and afford a relational, interactive, flexible and fluid framework that meets the features of AI research projects, so that core public and individual values are still honoured in the face of technological development. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students, and professionals engaged in public management and ethics management, AI ethics, public organizations, public service leadership and more broadly to public administration and policy, as well as applied ethics and philosophy.

This innovative and comprehensive collection of essays explores the biggest threats facing humanity in the 21st century; threats that cannot be contained or controlled and that have the potential to bring about human extinction and civilization collapse. Bringing together experts from many disciplines, it provides an accessible survey of what we know about these threats, how we can understand them better, and most importantly what can be done to manage them effectively. These essays pair insights from decades of research and activism around global risk with the latest academic findings from the emerging field of Existential Risk Studies. Voicing the work of world leading experts and tackling a variety of vital issues, they weigh up the demands of natural systems with political pressures and technological advances to build an empowering vision of how we can safeguard humanity’s long-term future. The book covers both a comprehensive survey of how to study and manage global risks with in-depth discussion of core risk drivers: including environmental breakdown, novel technologies, global scale natural disasters, and nuclear threats. The Era of Global Risk offers a thorough analysis of the most serious dangers to humanity. Inspiring, accessible, and essential reading for both students of global risk and those committed to its mitigation, this book poses one critical question: how can we make sense of this era of global risk and move beyond it to an era of global safety?