Some combination are so toxic and dangerous, one wish it was just a bad joke. But when you combine “Artificial Intelligence” with “Superpowers Arms Race” & Trump’s “Mini-Nukes” the only logical respond is: “Welcome to Your Nightmare”
Wired:
For the Superpowers, AI Fuels New Global Arms Race
“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind,” Putin said, via live video beamed to 16,000 selected schools. “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world,” Wired reports.
There were lots of discussion about robotic soldiers & while the thought of humans having less to do with war and conflict can be horrifying since the machines have no emotions, Trump is talking mini-nukes, which in theory, makes using nukes an easier human decision. Adding that thought to artificial intelligence, the situation is as horrifying as robot soldiers, and actually, even more horrifying.
Vox reports:
“In the midst of rising tensions with North Korea — with the prospect of war with a nuclear-armed power being widely considered in the US for the first time since the Cold War — President Donald Trump decided that Wednesday morning would be a good time to tweet this: My first order as President was to renovate and modernize our nuclear arsenal. It is now far stronger and more powerful than ever before….
The Independent Reports:
“President Donald Trump is reportedly reviewing proposals to add smaller, less powerful “mini nukes” to the United State’s nuclear arsenal. The proposal stems from Mr Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review, which he ordered in January to assess the country’s nuclear arsenal. Sources tell Politico that the high-level panel is pushing for the development of these low-yield bombs.
Such bombs – which carry far less power than those the US used in the Second World War – would give military commanders more options. But detractors say they could also increase the appeal of using nuclear weapons. Some worry that the use of smaller, more “palatable” nuclear bombs could quickly escalate into all-out nuclear war.”
From the wiki:
An arms race, in its original usage, is a competition between two or more states to have the best armed forces. Each party competes to produce more weapons, larger military, superior military technology, etc. in a technological escalation.
International conflict specialist Theresa Clair Smith, defines the term as “the participation of two or more nation-states in apparently competitive or interactive increases in quantity or quality of war material and/or persons under arms.”[1]
The term is also used to describe any long-term escalating competitive situation where each competitor focuses on out-doing the others.
Superpower is a term used to describe a state with a dominant position, which is characterised by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined-means of economic, military, technological and cultural strength, as well as diplomatic and soft power influence. Traditionally, superpowers are preeminent among the great powers.
The term was first applied post World War II to the British Empire, the United States and the Soviet Union. However, after the end of World War II and the Suez Crisis in 1956, the United Kingdom’s status as a superpower was greatly diminished, leaving just the United States and Soviet Union as superpowers. For the duration of the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union came to be generally regarded as the two remaining superpowers, dominating world affairs. At the end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, only the United States appeared to fulfill the criteria of being a world superpower.[1][2][3]
Alice Lyman Miller defines a superpower as “a country that has the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the world, and sometimes, in more than one region of the globe at a time, and so may plausibly attain the status of global hegemony.”[4]
There have been many attempts by historians to apply the term ‘superpower’ to a variety of past entities. However, since even the most powerful empires of old had little to no means to exert influence over very long distances, labeling them as such is complicated.
Artificial intelligence (AI, also machine intelligence, MI) is apparently intelligent behaviour by machines, rather than the natural intelligence (NI) of humans and other animals. In computer science AI research is defined as the study of “intelligent agents“: any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of success at some goal.[1] Colloquially, the term “artificial intelligence” is applied when a machine mimics “cognitive” functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as “learning” and “problem solving”.[2]
The scope of AI is disputed: as machines become increasingly capable, tasks considered as requiring “intelligence” are often removed from the definition, a phenomenon known as the AI effect, leading to the quip “AI is whatever hasn’t been done yet.”[3] For instance, optical character recognition is frequently excluded from “artificial intelligence”, having become a routine technology.[4] Capabilities generally classified as AI as of 2017 include successfully understanding human speech,[5] competing at a high level in strategic gamesystems (such as chess and Go[6]), autonomous cars, intelligent routing in content delivery networks, military simulations, and interpreting complex data.
Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in 1956, and in the years since has experienced several waves of optimism,[7][8] followed by disappointment and the loss of funding (known as an “AI winter“),[9][10] followed by new approaches, success and renewed funding.[11] For most of its history, AI research has been divided into subfields that often fail to communicate with each other.[12]
The traditional problems (or goals) of AI research include reasoning, knowledge, planning, learning, natural language processing, perception and the ability to move and manipulate objects.[13] General intelligence is among the field’s long-term goals.[14] Approaches include statistical methods, computational intelligence, and traditional symbolic AI. Many tools are used in AI, including versions of search and mathematical optimization, neural networks and methods based on statistics, probability and economics. The AI field draws upon computer science, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, artificial psychology and many others.
The field was founded on the claim that human intelligence “can be so precisely described that a machine can be made to simulate it”.[15] This raises philosophical arguments about the nature of the mind and the ethics of creating artificial beings endowed with human-like intelligence, issues which have been explored by myth, fiction and philosophy since antiquity.[16] Some people also consider AI a danger to humanity if it progresses unabatedly.[17]
In the twenty-first century, AI techniques have experienced a resurgence following concurrent advances in computer power, large amounts of data, and theoretical understanding; and AI techniques have become an essential part of the technology industry, helping to solve many challenging problems in computer science.[18]
The Following is from Wired (source)
For the Superpowers, AI Fuels New Global Arms Race
“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia but for all humankind,” he (Putin) said, via live video beamed to 16,000 selected schools. “Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”
Putin’s advice is the latest sign of an intensifying race among Russia, China, and the US to accumulate military power based on artificial intelligence. All three countries have proclaimed intelligent machines as vital to the future of their national security. Technologies such as software that can sift intelligence material or autonomous drones and ground vehicles are seen as ways to magnify the power of human soldiers.
“The US, Russia, and China are all in agreement that artificial intelligence will be the key technology underpinning national power in the future,” says Gregory C. Allen, a fellow at nonpartisan think tank the Center for a New American Security. He coauthored a recent report commissioned by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence that concluded artificial intelligence could shake up armed conflict as significantly as nuclear weapons did.
In July, China’s State Council released a detailed strategy designed to make the country “the front-runner and global innovation center in AI” by 2030. It includes pledges to invest in R&D that will “through AI elevate national defense strength and assure and protect national security.”
The US, widely recognized as home to the most advanced and vibrant AI development, doesn’t have a prescriptive roadmap like China’s. But for several years the Pentagon has been developing a strategy known as the “Third Offset,” intended to give the US, through weapons powered by smart software, the same sort of advantage over potential adversaries that it once held in nuclear bombs and precision-guided weapons. In April, the Department of Defense established the Algorithmic Warfare Cross-Functional Team to improve use of AI technologies such as machine vision across the Pentagon.
Russia lags behind China and the US in sophistication and use of automation and AI, but is expanding its own investments through a military modernization program begun in 2008. The government’s Military Industrial Committee has set a target of making 30 percent of military equipment robotic by 2025. “Russia is behind the curve—they are playing catchup,” says Samuel Bendett, a research analyst who studies the country’s military at the Center for Naval Analyses.
The AI race among the world’s three largest military powers differs from earlier competitions like those to deploy nuclear weapons or stealth technology because much artificial intelligence technology can be used for both commercial and military applications.
Algorithms good at searching holiday photos can be repurposed to scour spy satellite imagery, for example, while the control software needed for an autonomous minivan is much like that required for a driverless tank. Many recent advances in developing and deploying artificial intelligence emerged from research from companies such as Google.
Terence American News 