MIT AI Risk Repository · Risk Sub-Category · 55.02.02
AI enables automation of military decision-making
Category: Worsened conflict
Description
"One concern here is humans not remaining in the loop for some military decisions, creating the possibility of unintentional escalation because of: • Automated tactical decision-making, by ‘in-theatre’ AI systems (e.g. border patrol systems start accidentally firing on one another), leading to either: tactical-level war crimes,11 or strategic-level decisions to initiate conflict or escalate to a higher level of intensity—for example, countervalue (e.g. city-) targeting, or going nuclear [62]. • Automated strategic decision-making, by ‘out-of-theatre’ AI systems—for example, conflict prediction
From A Survey of the Potential Long-term Impacts of AI: How AI Could Lead to Long-term Changes in Science, Cooperation, Power, Epistemics and Values (Clarke2023), as extracted by the MIT AI Risk Repository (CC BY 4.0).
Classification
- Causal entity
- AI
- Intent
- Unintentional
- Timing
- Post-deployment
Subdomain definition: Humans delegating key decisions to AI systems, or AI systems making decisions that diminish human control and autonomy, potentially leading to humans feeling disempowered, losing the ability to shape a fulfilling life trajectory or becoming cognitively enfeebled.
Real-world incidents in this subdomain
- DisMech AI Curation Agent Reportedly Completed GitHub Issue Intended as New Contributor's Learning Task
- Waymo Driverless Taxi Allegedly Stalled During Pedestrian Harassment Incident in San Francisco
- California Police Turned on Music to Allegedly Trigger Instagram’s DCMA to Avoid Being Live-Streamed
- Hawaii Police Deployed Robot Dog to Patrol a Homeless Encampment
How other frameworks describe this risk
Other entries from Clarke2023
- Risks from accelerating scientific progress
- Eased development of technologies that make a global catastrophe more likely
- Eased development of technologies that make a global catastrophe more likely
- Faster scientific progress makes it harder for governance to keep pace with development
- Faster scientific progress makes it harder for governance to keep pace with development
- Worsened conflict
- AI enables development of weapons of mass destruction
- AI-induced strategic instability
- Resource conflicts driven by AI development
- Increased power concentration and inequality
- Unequal distribution of harms and benefits
- AI-based automation increases income inequality