The Sun
GIVING artificial intelligence control over nuclear weapons could trigger an apocalyptic conflict, a leading expert has warned.
As AI takes a greater and greater role in the control of devastating weaponry, so the chances of technology making a mistake and sparking World War 3 increase
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These include the USA’s B-21 nuclear bomber, China‘s AI hypersonic missiles, and Russia‘s Poseidon nuclear drone.
Writing for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, expert Zachary Kellenborn, a Policy Fellow at the Schar School of Policy and Government, warned: “If artificial intelligences controlled nuclear weapons, all of us could be dead.”
He went on: “Militaries are increasingly incorporating autonomous functions into weapons systems,” adding that “there is no guarantee that some military won’t put AI in charge of nuclear launches.”
Kellenborn, who describes himself as a US Army “Mad Scientist”, explained that “error” is the biggest problem with autonomous nuclear weapons.
He said: “In the real world, data may be biased or incomplete in all sorts of ways.”
Kellenborn added: “In a nuclear weapons context, a government may have little data about adversary military platforms; existing data may be structurally biased, by, for example, relying on satellite imagery; or data may not account for obvious, expected variations such as imagery taken during foggy, rainy, or overcast weather.”
Training a nuclear weapons AI program also poses a major challenge, as nukes have, thankfully, only been used twice in history in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, meaning any system would struggle to learn.
Despite these concerns, a number of AI military systems, including nuclear weapons, are already in place around the world.
In recent years, Russia has also upgraded its so-called “Doomsday device”, known as “Dead Hand”.
This final line of defence in a nuclear war would fire every Russian nuke at once, guaranteeing total destruction of the enemy.
First developed during the Cold War, it is believed to have been given an AI upgrade over the past few years.
In 2018, nuclear disarmament expert Dr Bruce Blair told the Daily Star Online he believes the system, known as “Perimeter”, is “vulnerable to cyber attack” which could prove catastrophic.
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