Future terror as AI feeds off war

AS TENSIONS escalate across the world, a major global conflict becomes a grim, deadly reality. Many powerful nations will deploy artificial intelligence in their military strategies.

Artificial Intelligence, or AI, is expanding every day – self-driving cars, service and cleaning robots, etc. Millions of jobs will be lost through automation linked to AI. Future combat and 21st century warfare – when crucial decisions will be made by AI-enabled software – is staggeringly frightful. Late British physicist Stephen Hawking warned AI could be the “worst event in the history of our civilisation”.

Tesla founder Elon Musk labelled AI an “immortal dictator”. Yuval Harari in his book Homo Deus, that a society deeply embedded with AI will witness the devaluation of humans.

Once hi-tech weapons like guided missile systems make their own AI-based decisions on who lives or dies there are endless possibilities for mistakes and massacres. In a nuclear scenario, billions could be exterminated by faulty computer codes. Advanced facial recognition technology has been catapulted to a kind of Big Brother even George Orwell never dreamt of. In a military context, AI robots will be capable of hitting targets without human intervention or approval.

Some 50% of current work would be automated as soon as 2030, using AI. The rise of such technology could spur governments to feel obliged to update their nuclear arsenal, trusting advice from AI machinery which could be flawed or tampered with.

If data is the new oil, then AI is the new drill and to extend this analogy, malfunctioning algorithms the new pollution.

FAROUK ARAIE | BENONI