No AI arms racing or crisis escalation.

Crisis escalation and heightened risk conflict due to technological change

This brings us to the final concern related to the current technological transition. According to the most pessimistic interpretations, algorithms are likely to escalate diplomatic crises into military confrontations and further increase the intensity of combat. In other words, conflict and the use of violence may soon become much more common because intelligent machines are allegedly lacking in political understanding and human experience. This is a crucial topic, worthy of the highest ethical considerations and political attention. But here again, history and logic reassure against the bleakest outlook.

First, automation is nothing new, as machines conducting calculations and computations have long existed: the late 19th century self-propelled torpedo relied on automatic devices for hydrostatic stability and course correction; early 20th century naval guns employed mechanical fire control systems for long range accuracy; similarly, electronics and computers have enabled the evolution of military aircraft through the 20th and 21th centuries as the speed, number and complexity of calculations have grown beyond the cognitive abilities of the pilot(s) in the cockpit.11

Second, most observers look at the process of automation as a substitution between labor (personnel) and capital (hardware and software). In fact, any technological transition also entails a complementation process. By reducing the cost of some tasks and products, technological change inherently leads to an increase in the demand for goods or services that are jointly consumed (e.g., complements). For instance, by making real-time, long-distance video surveillance more readily accessible, drones have inherently called for a surge in bandwidth consumption and imagery analysts. Drones may be cheap and easy to build, but as their use increases, the availability of bandwidth and the supply of imagery analysts inevitably represent a growing constraint to operations. AI, ML and BD not only inherently raise similar challenges, but the more disruptive they prove, the more acute the related challenges will be – making it more difficult to exploit such new technology.

Some may object that algorithms can still misunderstand signals and thus pull countries into spirals of confrontation, escalation and conflict or, alternatively, lead to excessive violence in warfare. This is a reasonable worry that rests, however, on the assumption that countries have access to battle-proven autonomous systems, capable of neutralizing most counter-measures and also supported by all the necessary complements. If this assumption does not materialize, AI, ML and BD can deliver very little in battle. The above discussion shows that meeting those conditions is extremely challenging.