Emerging AI Cold War destabilizing: British media

LONDON -- A world-review article published recently on British journal Nature warned against proliferating military artificial intelligence (AI), calling for more focus on ethics and global cooperation.

A race to militarize AI is gearing up, and it would be profoundly "destabilizing," the article wrote.

This March, the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence of the United States recommended Washington accelerate AI technologies to "preserve national security and remain competitive with China and Russia," it said.

The commission resurrected disastrous ideas from the Cold War and framed its report in terms of winning a competition for AI-enabled warfare, it added.

"Enhancing AI war-fighting capacity will decrease security in a world where the biggest threats are instability -- political, social, economic and planetary," Nature argued.

"The relentless pursuit of militarization does not protect us," the article noted. "It diverts resources and attention from nearer existential threats, such as extreme weather events. With the world reeling from COVID-19 -- the shock of the century -- now is not the moment to hasten towards worldwide confrontation."