Why in news?
United Nations (UN) group of expert hosts first formal inter-governmental discussion on AI armed conflicts.
What are AI weapons?
- Artificial intelligence (AI, also machine intelligence, MI) is Intelligence displayed by machines, in contrast with the natural intelligence (NI) displayed by humans and other animals.
- The term "artificial intelligence" is applied when a machine mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as "learning" and "problem solving".
- Autonomous weapons select and engage targets without human intervention.
- They might include, for example, armed quadcopters that can search for and eliminate people meeting certain pre-defined criteria.
What are the concerns with future weapons?
- Throughout history, the capacity to wield new technologies has changed how wars are fought, and the strategic balance between attack and defence maintained.
- The norms around what is considered acceptable in warfare have also evolved in response to new technologies.
- Since the 19th century, those norms have been codified in international humanitarian law, which is more or less universally accepted as regulating armed conflict among civilised nations.
- Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are throwing up a new challenge to these norms.
- Many technology leaders are worried about autonomous systems taking life-and-death decisions without “meaningful human supervision or control”.
How this concerns are to be addressed?
- Tech billionaires around the world recently signed a letter warning that the weaponisation of AI-based technologies risks opening lethal problems.
- The letter called on the UN to find a way to protect human society from all the dangers of automated weaponisation.
- In many areas of technological complexity, alternative governance models have emerged, such as the ‘multi-stakeholder’ approach to Internet governance.
Source: The Hindu
