Why AI can be worrisome.
• CCP Develops AI Weapons, Ignoring Global Risks (ET)
Cutting-edge weapons powered by artificial intelligence are emerging as a global security hazard, especially in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to several experts. Eager to militarily surpass the United States, the CCP is unlikely to heed safeguards around lethal AI technologies, which are increasingly dangerous in their own right, the experts have argued. The nature of the technology is prone to feeding some of the worst tendencies of the regime and the human psyche in general, they warned. “The implications are quite dramatic. And they may be the equal of the nuclear revolution,” said Bradley Thayer, a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy, an expert on a strategic assessment of China, and a contributor to The Epoch Times. The development of AI-powered autonomous weapons unfortunately is rapidly progressing, according to Alexander De Ridder, an AI developer and co-founder of Ink, an AI marketing firm.
“They’re becoming quickly more efficient and quickly more effective,” he told The Epoch Times, adding that “they’re not at the point where they can replace humans.” Autonomous drones, tanks, ships, and submarines have become a reality along with more exotic modalities, such as the quadruped robot dogs, already armed with machine guns in China. Even AI-powered humanoid robots, the stuff of sci-fi horrors, are in production. Granted, they’re still rather clumsy in the real world, but they won’t be for long, De Ridder suggested. “The capabilities for such robots are quickly advancing,” he said. Once they reach marketable usefulness and reliability, China is likely to turn its manufacturing might to their mass production, according to De Ridder. “The market will be flooded with humanoid robots, and then it’s up to the programming how they’re used.” That would mean military use, too. “It’s kind of inevitable,” he said.
China International Industry Fair in Shanghai on Nov. 2, 2015. (Getty Images)
Such AI-powered machines are very effective at processing images to discern objects—to detect a human with their optical sensors, for example, explained James Qiu, an AI expert, founder of GIT Research Institute, and former CTO at FileMaker. That makes AI robots very good at targeting. “It’s a very effective killing machine,” he said. On a broader level, multiple nations are working on an AI capable of informing and coordinating battlefield decisions—an electronic general, according to Jason Ma, an AI expert and data research lead at a multinational Fortune 500 company. He didn’t want the company’s name mentioned to prevent any impression he was speaking on its behalf. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the CCP military, recently conducted battle exercises in which an AI was directly put in command. The U.S. military also has projects in this area, Ma noted.
