By Michael Klare and Tom Engelhardt

I give myself credit for being significantly ahead of my time. I first came across artificial intelligence (AI) in 1968 when I was just 24 years old and, from the beginning, I sensed its deep dangers. Imagine that.

Much as I’d like to brag about it, though, I was anything but alone. I was, in fact, undoubtedly one of millions of people who saw the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, directed by Stanley Kubrick from a script written with Arthur C. Clarke (inspired by a short story, “The Sentinel,” that famed science-fiction writer Clarke had produced in – yes! – 1948). AI then had an actual name, HAL 9,000 (but call “him” Hal).

And no, the first imagined AI in my world did not act well, which should have been (but didn’t prove to be) a lesson for us all. Embedded in a spaceship heading for Jupiter, he killed four of the five astronauts on it and did his best to do in the last of them before being shut down.

It should, of course, have been a warning to us all about a world we would indeed enter in this century. Unfortunately, as with so many things that are worrying on planet Earth, it seems that we couldn’t help ourselves. HAL was destined to become a reality – or rather endlessly multiplying realities – in this world of ours. In that context, TomDispatch regular Michael Klare, who has been warning for years about a “human” future in which “robot generals” could end up running armed forces globally, considers wars to come, what it might mean for AI to replace human intelligence in major militaries globally, and just where that might lead us. I’m not sure that either Stanley Kubrick or Arthur C. Clarke would be surprised. ~ Tom Engelhardt
Human Extinction as Collateral Damage

By Michael Klare

A world in which machines governed by artificial intelligence (AI) systematically replace human beings in most business, industrial, and professional functions is horrifying to imagine. After all, as prominent computer scientists have been warning us, AI-governed systems are prone to critical errors and inexplicable “hallucinations,” resulting in potentially catastrophic outcomes. But there’s an even more dangerous scenario imaginable from the proliferation of super-intelligent machines: the possibility that those nonhuman entities could end up fighting one another, obliterating all human life in the process.

The notion that super-intelligent computers might run amok and slaughter humans has, of course, long been a staple of popular culture. In the prophetic 1983 film WarGames, a supercomputer known as WOPR (for War Operation Plan Response and, not surprisingly, pronounced “whopper”) nearly provokes a catastrophic nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union before being disabled by a teenage hacker (played by Matthew Broderick). The Terminator movie franchise, beginning with the original 1984 film, similarly envisioned a self-aware supercomputer called “Skynet” that, like WOPR, was designed to control U.S. nuclear weapons but chooses instead to wipe out humanity, viewing us as a threat to its existence.

Though once confined to the realm of science fiction, the concept of supercomputers killing humans has now become a distinct possibility in the very real world of the near future. In addition to developing a wide variety of “autonomous,” or robotic combat devices, the major military powers are also rushing to create automated battlefield decision-making systems, or what might be called “robot generals.” In wars in the not-too-distant future, such AI-powered systems could be deployed to deliver combat orders to American soldiers, dictating where, when, and how they kill enemy troops or take fire from their opponents. In some scenarios, robot decision-makers could even end up exercising control over America’s atomic weapons, potentially allowing them to ignite a nuclear war resulting in humanity’s demise.

Now, take a breath for a moment. The installation of an AI-powered command-and-control (C2) system like this may seem a distant possibility. Nevertheless, the U.S. Department of Defense is working hard to develop the required hardware and software in a systematic, increasingly rapid fashion. In its budget submission for 2023, for example, the Air Force requested $231 million to develop the Advanced Battlefield Management System (ABMS), a complex network of sensors and AI-enabled computers designed to collect and interpret data on enemy operations and provide pilots and ground forces with a menu of optimal attack options. As the technology advances, the system will be capable of sending “fire” instructions directly to “shooters,” largely bypassing human control.

“A machine-to-machine data exchange tool that provides options for deterrence, or for on-ramp [a military show-of-force] or early engagement,” was how Will Roper, assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology, and logistics, described the ABMS system in a 2020 interview. Suggesting that “we do need to change the name” as the system evolves, Roper added, “I think Skynet is out, as much as I would love doing that as a sci-fi thing. I just don’t think we can go there.”

And while he can’t go there, that’s just where the rest of us may, indeed, be going.

Mind you, that’s only the start. In fact, the Air Force’s ABMS is intended to constitute the nucleus of a larger constellation of sensors and computers that will connect all U.S. combat forces, the Joint All-Domain Command-and-Control System (JADC2, pronounced “Jad-C-two”). “JADC2 intends to enable commanders to make better decisions by collecting data from numerous sensors, processing the data using artificial intelligence algorithms to identify targets, then recommending the optimal weapon… to engage the target,” the Congressional Research Service reported in 2022.

AI and the Nuclear Trigger

Initially, JADC2 will be designed to coordinate combat operations among “conventional” or non-nuclear American forces. Eventually, however, it is expected to link up with the Pentagon’s nuclear command-control-and-communications systems (NC3), potentially giving computers significant control over the use of the American nuclear arsenal. “JADC2 and NC3 are intertwined,” General John E. Hyten, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, indicated in a 2020 interview. As a result, he added in typical Pentagonese, “NC3 has to inform JADC2 and JADC2 has to inform NC3.”

It doesn’t require great imagination to picture a time in the not-too-distant future when a crisis of some sort – say a U.S.-China military clash in the South China Sea or near Taiwan – prompts ever more intense fighting between opposing air and naval forces. Imagine then the JADC2 ordering the intense bombardment of enemy bases and command systems in China itself, triggering reciprocal attacks on U.S. facilities and a lightning decision by JADC2 to retaliate with tactical nuclear weapons, igniting a long-feared nuclear holocaust.

The possibility that nightmare scenarios of this sort could result in the accidental or unintended onset of nuclear war has long troubled analysts in the arms control community. But the growing automation of military C2 systems has generated anxiety not just among them but among senior national security officials as well.

As early as 2019, when I questioned Lieutenant General Jack Shanahan, then director of the Pentagon’s Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, about such a risky possibility, he responded, “You will find no stronger proponent of integration of AI capabilities writ large into the Department of Defense, but there is one area where I pause, and it has to do with nuclear command and control.” This “is the ultimate human decision that needs to be made” and so “we have to be very careful.” Given the technology’s “immaturity,” he added, we need “a lot of time to test and evaluate [before applying AI to NC3].”

In the years since, despite such warnings, the Pentagon has been racing ahead with the development of automated C2 systems. In its budget submission for 2024, the Department of Defense requested $1.4 billion for the JADC2 in order “to transform warfighting capability by delivering information advantage at the speed of relevance across all domains and partners.” Uh-oh! And then, it requested another $1.8 billion for other kinds of military-related AI research.

Pentagon officials acknowledge that it will be some time before robot generals will be commanding vast numbers of U.S. troops (and autonomous weapons) in battle, but they have already launched several projects intended to test and perfect just such linkages. One example is the Army’s Project Convergence, involving a series of field exercises designed to validate ABMS and JADC2 component systems. In a test held in August 2020 at the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona, for example, the Army used a variety of air- and ground-based sensors to track simulated enemy forces and then process that data using AI-enabled computers at Joint Base Lewis McChord in Washington state. Those computers, in turn, issued fire instructions to ground-based artillery at Yuma. “This entire sequence was supposedly accomplished within 20 seconds,” the Congressional Research Service later reported.

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https://tomdispatch.com/ai-versus-ai/