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Concept
Artificial intelligence arms race
Summary
A military artificial intelligence arms race is an arms race between two or more states to develop and deploy lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS). Since the mid-2010s, many analysts have noted the emergence of such an arms race between global superpowers for better military AI, driven by increasing geopolitical and military tensions. An AI arms race is sometimes placed in the context of an AI Cold War between the US and China.
Lethal autonomous weapons systems use artificial intelligence to identify and kill human targets without human intervention. LAWS have colloquially been called "slaughterbots" or "killer robots". Broadly, any competition for superior AI is sometimes framed as an "arms race". Advantages in military AI overlap with advantages in other sectors, as countries pursue both economic and military advantages.
In 2014, AI specialist Steve Omohundro warned that "An autonomous weapons arms race is already taking place". According to Siemens, worldwide military spending on robotics was US7.5 billion in 2015.
China became a top player in artificial intelligence research in the 2010s. According to the Financial Times, in 2016, for the first time, China published more AI papers than the entire European Union. When restricted to number of AI papers in the top 5% of cited papers, China overtook the United States in 2016 but lagged behind the European Union. 23% of the researchers presenting at the 2017 American Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) conference were Chinese. Eric Schmidt, the former chairman of Alphabet, has predicted China will be the leading country in AI by 2025.
One risk concerns the AI race itself, whether or not the race is won by any one group. There are strong incentives for development teams to cut corners with regard to the safety of the system, which may result in increased algorithmic bias. This is in part due to the perceived advantage of being the first to develop advanced AI technology.
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