Artificial intelligence will transform our planet
Irrespective of the magnitude and impact of technology on domestic and foreign policies, it is likely to pose several fundamental questions to officials and experts in future studies, national security and political science
It is agreed that Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the hurricane or tsunami that would transform our planet, impacting all fields and questioning the decadeslong commonly accepted facts. In this regard, the political sphere is not exempt from the impacts of AI in terms of interstate relations and interaction of international relations among other areas.
The impact AI has on domestic policies has positive and negative aspects. Explaining them requires large-scale and in-depth studies; however, I will try to briefly outline them.
1. AI technology allows ordinary citizens to play a greater role to impact public policy, as it provides them with big data and permits them to oversee the government action more effectively, exposing all forms of corruption or wrongdoing. Moreover, this allows for further pressure on governments through what we may call cyber mobilisation due to the considerable potentials of cyber platforms that have increasingly become more difficult for governments to ban or control.
2. AI may provide significant support to decision-makers. First, it allows them to thoroughly and precisely examine any amount of information within a short timeframe, thus understand it more deeply and comprehensively.
Second, AI allows decision-makers to learn more about people’s thoughts and tendencies to analyse them, and predict their future trends by examining people’s activities in social media platforms and online search engines, or even through their hobbies, lifestyles, reading, or the music they listen to. Therefore, decision-makers can reach quick and precise results, allowing them to make decisions based on accurate knowledge of people’s orientations.
Third, AI significantly allows decision-makers to expect the future course of events nationally, regionally and internationally by utilising specialised programs; therefore, helping them to make the right decision in terms of domestic and foreign policies.
Fourth, studies indicate that robots can autonomously make decisions in light of the information they receive, which gives decision-makers a wide range of options to address any emerging issue or crisis. China has actually begun to benefit from AI in decisionmaking, relying on the major advances reached by AI in strategic games, such as the game of chess in which robots outperform humans.
Fifth, AI helps decision-makers to easily and effectively deliver their message to the public regarding any issue by resorting to techniques that would rapidly deliver the message taking into account the target’s educational level, social status and field of work. This resolves the issue of communication between leadership and the public, which still persists in certain countries and societies.
3. AI technology facilitates the tasks of leaders and officials, because it provides them with programs and techniques that would allow for following up and monitoring work process, as well as spotting defects, in order to accurately and rapidly address them, which is not possible with traditional mechanisms including periodical meetings and field visits. This technology permits governments to save considerable time, effort and money.
Government action
4. AI technology actually serves decision-makers and facilitates government action; however, it paves the way for new competitors and entities capable of impacting the policy-making processes, primarily technology firms that possess AI techniques. Such firms, local or foreign, would have significant influence on economic, political, and security arenas, and would intervene in public affairs. Certainly the influence of foreign companies would be more dangerous, since sovereignty and national interests would be threatened. The situation would be riskier if those companies are exploited by the countries to which they belong in order to leverage greater impact on policies and decisions, compared to that exerted by multinational companies.
5. AI leads to the emergence of sources of threats and tension that would jeopardise internal stability, and thus exert further pressure on governments. Jobs automation has increased due to AI, abandoning human workers, in variant degrees, for the sake of machines, which would cause unemployment and consequently lead to serious security and social tensions. AI creates new job opportunities, yet they require human resources with highly advanced competences, which is not possible in many societies, mainly those in the developing and poor countries.
Further, there are three aspects of AI’s impact on international policy to shed light on. First is the impact on the balance of global powers, including features and characteristics of these powers. Possessing AI along with its sophisticated techniques, countries gain substantial power and ability to impact the world and dominate it at all political, economic, military, and security levels. World conflicts would be more probable, since rivalry between major world powers over AI would seriously intensify conflicts among them. The French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs (IRIS) warned in November 2017 that global rivalry over AI would lead to a Third World War. AI technology would deepen global imbalance among advanced countries and the rest of the world, because it provides the advanced world with greater potential to penetrate developing or poor countries, undermine their sovereignty, and impose foreign hegemony on them, through AI programs that offer wider access to information and espionage capabilities, thus influencing people’s thoughts and orientations. Furthermore, this would substantially widen the existing gap between advanced countries and the rest of the world, which would create tension between countries and people and undermine peace in the world.
Regardless of the magnitude, course and nature of the impact of AI technology on domestic and foreign policies in the upcoming period, it is certain this technology poses many fundamental questions to political officials, experts, strategic thinkers and those specialised in future studies, national security and political science in general:
1. How does AI impact the concept of national security? Are the methods, approaches and notions that have shaped our understanding of this concept over years still relevant in the age of AI, despite the changes in the nature of threats and risks, as well as their sources and the ways to tackle them?
2. How can sovereignty be defined in light of AI? Can this concept maintain its current significance and meaning? How far can it undergo changes? How can it be addressed without undermining the best interests of the country?
3. How can AI impact diplomacy? Will diplomatic action be conducted in the same traditional way, without altering its mechanisms and tasks, or will AI impose new mechanisms, tools, notions, and tasks that require different skills, and provide new trainings for diplomats to reshape the diplomatic action’s nature and tasks?
4. In order to stay abreast of the huge advances triggered by AI technology, will colleges, institutes, and academies concerned with political science and national security change their curricula and instructional tools?
UAE strategy
5. Will parliaments, political parties, and civil societies keep current methods to ensure their functioning and target-setting, or has it become necessary for them to comprehensively reconsider their working mechanisms and philosophy, so that they can continuously play their role in promoting and defending people’s interests, as AI technology has provided individuals with alternative mechanisms to express their interests?
The UAE is one of the pioneering countries in the Arab region and the Middle East in terms of emphasis on AI, as manifested by the adoption of the UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence and the creation of the Ministry of State for Artificial Intelligence. Nevertheless, it is crucial to address this issue domestically as a national security issue, because it is linked to the UAE’s future position in the world and ability to safeguard its own security and interests.
This implies diligent implementation of pertinent programmes, primarily UAE Strategy for Artificial Intelligence, and effective utilisation of Ministry of State for Artificial Intelligence. It is also equally important to continuously and thoroughly examine various aspects for AI development. This would enable setting plans to tackle consequences resulting from such development, harness positive effects, and monitor its various impacts on the international balance of power.