AI will change how wars are fought, but not the nature of war. War is still, and will forever be, applied violence to achieve a political goal. Like human nature itself, the fundamental qualities that define the nature of warfare are impervious to change. AI will, however, cause a shift in the character of war.
At the same time that science and technology have vastly improved human lives, they have also given certain visionaries the means to transform entire societies from above. Ominously, what was true of Soviet central planners is true of Big Tech today: namely, the assumption that society can be improved through pure “rationality.”
Freedom of speech, increasingly accepted of late as a general good, becomes problematic when coupled with deception, anonymity and the power of vast wealth to magnify some voices 1,000-fold over others. And for many spreaders of disinformation, getting a reader/viewer/voter actually to believe your untruths is not the only measure of success. Simply confusing them, encouraging them to doubt opposition truths, is just as good.
Elites have always used their privileged position and access to resources for self-serving purposes, not for the greater good of humanity. And this abuse continues, disguised, as elites harness artificial intelligence and other new technologies to reach new levels of power previously undreamed of. A new breed of elites is born: “ailites”.
World leaders who gather in Osaka, Japan, for the G20 summit this week will begin a conversation on worldwide data governance—and though they are deeply divided on the question of who should control data, some nations could seek to devise a system that excludes China.
Artificial Intelligence promises to bring both enormous benefits, in everything from health care to transportation, and huge risks. But those risks aren’t something out of science fiction; there’s no need to fear a robot uprising. The real threat will come from humans.
The supercomputing race between the world’s two largest economies escalated after the US unveiled plans for its first machine to cross the “exascale” performance threshold by 2021, putting it roughly a year behind a similar plan from China.
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has had a very bad week, even in the context of a very bad year. The week of bad news actually started March 8 with a proposal from U.S. senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to break up the company. Then there was the longest-ever outage of Facebook’s social network and services, which almost overshadowed news of a criminal investigation into its data-agreements with other companies…But the ultimate blow came on Friday with the massacre of 50 people in New Zealand, live streamed on Facebook.
Also read: Why Tech Didn’t Stop The New Zealand Attack From Going Viral
Governments are motivated to pursue leadership in AI by the promise of gaining a strategic advantage. At this early stage, it’s tough to tell what sort of advantage is at stake, because we don’t know what sort of thing AI will turn out to be. Since AI is a technology, it’s natural to think of it as a mere resource that can assist in attaining one’s goals, perhaps by allowing drones to fly without supervision or increasing the efficiency of supply chains.
Apart from its tremendous commercial benefits, 5G – the fifth generation of mobile communication – is revolutionising military and security technology, which is partly why it has become a focal point in the United States’ efforts to contain China’s rise as a tech power and its allegations against Chinese companies.
