Artificial Intelligence and Power

Governance, Democracy and Military Capabilities

Counting again with the gracious leave of Aldous Huxley and his "Brave new world" we embark on another journey of exploration of this brave new world of ours. Artificial Intelligence and Power will be the waters that we will navigate in this second article of the series on AI. We sincerely hope that we may enjoy the privilege of your companionship, dear readers, in these explorations that we invite you to join us.

Matters of power, governance, democracy and military might are one of the utmost pressing issues of our contemporary world, deeply shaken with raging wars, autocrats rising within democracies themselves and yet another world's powers struggle, cold war style, not just looming in the horizon but happening just now,

The surge of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) might pose or not an existential risk in the near future, as we described in the last article. Current Generative Intelligence (AI) and chatbots as GPT4 are disrupting democracies and fair elections right now. AI is providing perilous ruses for democracies and highly dangerous warfare devices in our conflicting world.

We intend, dear readers, to set out for you all the significant information regarding those very sensitive issues, that are disrupting the very tenets of our world. We invite you, once more, to join us in the quest.

AI and Democracy

Carl J. Miller, scholar and resercher states: “ Political discourses have the power to shape the world and our lives.” When the world changes, also power changes. Revolutionary changes are reshaping the global scenario. AI has entered the play of politics.

Political misinformation has an old history, a history as old as politics themselves are, diving into the oceans of Antiquity Just remember the alleged Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that Bush Jr. used to trigger his desired war. We can go as back as the Peloponnesian War in ancient Greece and far into a more distant past.. Today we have a new and most powerful player in that field, AI. The so called “deep fakes” are a highly pernicious tool now available to unscrupled politcians, political parties and covert organizations who want to influence domestic or foreign political events. Deep fakes are false images, voices or videos designed by generative AI to mislead, in every possible way, audiences keen for certainties in a dubious information environment. The fakes ugly faces have emerged, for example, in the fraught presidential campaign in Taiwan and in the battlefields of Ukraine, very important chessbords in the current global geopolitical playing field. Reliable information is now more important than ever, when citizens and netizens all around the world deeply distrust mainstream news media outlets, biased they maybe or not.

“Artificial Intelligence is a threat to democracy “ says UK government expert, Dame Wendy Hall. She is is a member of the UK government's AI Council, and also regius professor of computer science at the University of Southampton. Dear readers, What are the intentions and intended solutions of governments and large technology companies in this regard? Let's take a look.

Bletchley Park Summit

Last November, representatives and companies from 28 countries, including the US and China, as well as the EU, signed the pact that aims to tackle the risks of AI models. A “world-first” agreement on the safety of artificial intelligence (AI) was reached at a global summit in the UK, or so the say.

Technology experts, world leaders and representatives from 27 countries and the European Union attended the Artificial Intelligence Security Summit at Bletchley Park, once the birthplace of the code breakers of the Second World War, where Alan Turing the father of the computer worked.

The British Government called it a "world-first" agreement between the signatories, which aims to identify "AI security risks of shared interest" and create "respective risk-based policies between countries."

However, it is unclear how exactly the agreements will play out.

UK Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology Michelle Donelan declared the agreement a "landmark achievement" and "lays the foundation for today's discussions".The British Government also announced the holding of future summits on AI safety. Yes, sure they will.

South Korea will launch another "virtual mini-summit" on AI in the next six months and France will host the next in-person AI summit next year. However, experts argue that the agreement does not go far enough. They are right.

"Bringing together the great powers to support ethical principles can be considered a success, but concrete policies and accountability mechanisms must be quickly undertaken," Paul Teather, CEO of the AI research company, said."Vague terminology leads to misinterpretations, while relying solely on voluntary cooperation is insufficient to implement globally recognized good practices around AI," he continued.

Billionaire technology entrepreneur Elon Musk arrived at the summit and remained silent during the talks, but said the meeting seeks to establish an "arbitrator" for technology companies. "I think what we're trying to do here is to establish a framework so that there is at least one independent arbiter who can look at what the leading AI companies are doing and at least raise the alarm if they have doubts," he told the news agency. AP "I think what we're trying to do here is... first, establish that there should be a referee role, I think there should be. And then, you know, be cautious in how the regulations are applied, so as not to go on a charge with regulations that inhibit the positive side of AI,"

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created in 1988 to facilitate comprehensive assessments of the state of scientific, technical and socioeconomic knowledge on climate change and its causes, potential impacts and response strategies. The Panel sends yearly reports to the UN, governments and other international agencies. The most significant idea that came from the Bletchley Park Summit is to create a similar AI panel that will also send yearly reports. Dear readers, we all know how the fight against climate change is faring, don’t we?

That collage of conflicting interests can only be decoded with difficulties, because there are so many ,contradictory with others and self contradicting also. As unifying principle maybe, in the words of the above quoted Carl J: Miller “The Power elite is mostly unregulated” Big tech corporations are fundamentally profit driven, although AI counter Powers can be created by governments. The point is that the latter themselves have conflicting interets within themselves in AI enhanced survellance devices or military capabilities, just to name some of them. In realpolitik terms, power has no ethics or morals. A lot of balancing acts are needed here. We do not think that those are feasible in the near future, but, dear readers, we serve you food for thought and it is up to you to draw your own opinions. We are well aware that distrust in governments and democracies run deep. “If voting made an difference, they wouldn¨t let us do it”, once Mark Twain wrote.

Breaking News…as this article is bieng wirtten, The New York Times titles “ E.U. agrees on landmark Aritificial Intellegence Rules “ and later “European policy makers focused on AI’s riskiest uses by companies and governments, including those for law enforcement and the operation of crucial services…”. Let’s see how that works out.

AI and warfare

AI and contemporary warfare is a complex and ever evolving issue that has many implications of conflict and security. AI can be applied to many aspects of warfare such as intelligenece, reconnaisance, targeting, commnand and control, logistics, cyberoperations and autonomous weapons. Remember the AI automated killing robots?

Some potential benefits of AI in warfare examples are enhancing situational awareness, improving accuracy and efficiency, less human errors, and creating new capabilities and strategies. However, AI beckons challenges and risks,among them ethical, legal, moral and humanitarian dilemas. vulnerability to adversarial attacks and manipulations, escalations and instability, loss of human control and accountability.

The main questions surrounding the use of AI in warfare are:

• How we can ensure that AI systems are aligned with human values and comply with the laws of war and human rights ? Very difficult question.

• How we can mantain strategic stability and deterrence in a “brave new world” AI where AI could create new domains and ways to conduct new modes of conflict, such as cyberwarfare , information warfare and hybrid warfare. ? Such a complex task awaits…

• How can we foster cooperation and trust between nations and stakeholders to develop AI responsably and transparently?

Dear readers, the answers lie somewhere in the future… We sincerely hope that you join us again in this quest of the “brave new world” in our next article on this subject.