By Granate Kim<\/p>\n
The world\u2019s militaries are locked in an arms race to develop the use of artificial intelligence in warfare. They\u2019ve been at it for more than a decade \u2014 despite\u00a0calls<\/a>\u00a0from civil society and AI experts to ban its use in military operations, given the devastation that inaccurate AI targeting can cause.<\/p>\n In Gaza, AI has helped accelerate the\u00a0death toll<\/a>\u00a0to more than 72,000 people. In Iran, a U.S. airstrike on the first day of the war\u00a0killed<\/a>\u00a0between 175 and 180 people, mostly girls between the ages of 7 and 12. The strike was said to be AI-assisted, with outdated intelligence data and human error playing pivotal roles.<\/p>\n The Pentagon is ignoring such red flags over the use of AI to identify targets, direct drones and analyze battlefields. In July, the U.S. military tested <\/a>an AI-powered drone controlled entirely by its own onboard software, with no human pilot or remote operator involved.<\/p>\n The International Committee of the Red Cross has\u00a0called for<\/a>\u00a0new rules and restrictions seeking to reduce the harm that this emerging technology can cause. Concerns around AI\u2019s growing role in war have also spurred resistance efforts from tech workers, policymakers and other human rights organizations, including the group I work for, MPower Change, which successfully\u00a0organized<\/a>\u00a0with Microsoft workers to pressure the company into\u00a0terminating<\/a>\u00a0its contract with an Israeli military intelligence unit surveilling Palestinians.<\/p>\n But we need to do a lot more, because the use of AI in war is the most harmful use of this technology. Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the\u00a0AI Now Institute<\/a>, a New York-based nonprofit that produces policy recommendations, has\u00a0argued<\/a>, as the Washington Post put it in a 2024 article, that \u201cAI systems have built-in inaccuracies that make them inappropriate for a life-and-death context such as war.\u201d In late July, the institute and the transparency watchdog\u00a0Airwars<\/a>\u00a0released \u201cAnatomy of a Kill Chain<\/a>\u201d \u2014 a powerful visualization of how \u201ccascading errors\u201d in data and AI analysis can wrongfully bring death and destruction to large numbers of civilians.<\/p>\n The Washington Post investigation into Israel\u2019s use of AI\u00a0revealed<\/a>\u00a0how the military dangerously relaxed its oversight of AI use when bombing Gaza. Its normal rules mandated two pieces of human intelligence to validate, but at the outset of the war, the rule was dropped to require only one. And, astonishingly, at times the only corroboration required was that the target be male.<\/p>\n The American public is broadly in agreement about opposing the use of AI in war. According to\u00a0polling<\/a>\u00a0last spring by Public Citizen, three-quarters of respondents feel that AI technology isn\u2019t reliable enough to be trusted with life-or-death military decisions. Only 21% of Americans support developing and deploying AI-controlled weapons.<\/p>\n More than 200 organizations and individuals \u2014 from human and digital rights groups to tech workers \u2014 are now\u00a0calling on<\/a>\u00a0governments and companies to halt the use of AI systems in the military \u201ckill chain.\u201d MPower Change\u2019s recently launched\u00a0No AI for War<\/a>\u00a0campaign compiles actions that everyday people can take to advocate for the ethical use of AI technologies, like petitioning Congress to ban autonomous weapons and pressuring big tech companies to end defense contracts that supply cloud computing and predictive AI.<\/p>\n We\u2019re at a critical moment, when the actions being taken by tech companies and governments may decide the fate of humanity. Governments must end the use of AI in military targeting and create meaningful oversight of its other military uses. Companies must stop selling AI technologies and services for use in military targeting, autonomous weapons systems and mass surveillance. Apple\u2019s\u00a0cancellation<\/a>\u00a0of a contract tied to the Pentagon\u2019s Project Maven is a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n We must do what we can collectively to stop the wars causing incalculable harm to humans and the health of our planet. When wars are fought despite our best efforts, we can still insist they be waged as morally as possible by ensuring the responsible use of AI technology \u2014 or, ideally, avoiding its use entirely.<\/p>\n Granate Kim is the campaigns director for\u00a0MPower Change<\/a>, a grassroots movement of diverse Muslim communities working together to build social, racial and economic justice for all people. This column was produced for\u00a0Progressive Perspectives<\/a>, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.<\/p>\n To send a letter to the editor about this article, submit online<\/a> or check out our guidelines<\/a> for how to submit by email.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Granate Kim The world\u2019s militaries are locked in an arms race to develop the use of artificial…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":148063,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[24,25,2524,2853,1651],"class_list":["post-148062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ai","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-commentary","tag-latest-headlines","tag-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148062"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148062\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/148063"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=148062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=148062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}