Artificial Intelligence and International Security

This article, published by researchers at the Center for a New American Security, highlights many examples of how AI and Machine learning have been used and the potential for it to impact many sectors, such as the economy, the defense industry, national security, and how information is shared across the internet. Some of these examples include the pervasiveness of troll bots and their impact on spreading disinformation, the growing use of deep fakes to generate fake photos and videos of potentially compromising information/situations, and the military using these technologies to come up with new battlefield tactics, camouflage, and control systems. After the examples, the authors move to the subject of the impact of automation on societal and political systems. They make claims about the rise of automation fueling populist nationalist movements as workers are forced out of jobs and desire to return to the old status quo, a major factor in the rise of political polarization. Additionally, the authors emphasize a different major impact of AI they call the “end of truth” where realistic forgeries of data digital data result in people losing trust in what they are seeing online and causing then to revert to fractionalized news sources where everyone is able to see only what they want to see. Finally, the authors wrap up by stating a plethora of questions that still remain about the future state of the society we live in that will most likely remain unanswered for a long time but provide interesting perspectives to think about.