Should AI Stay or Should AI Go? First Strike Incentives & Deterrence Stability in the Third Nuclear Age

DISCUSSING AI, AUTOMATED SYSTEMS, AND THE FUTURE OF WAR SEMINAR SERIES

How should states balance the benefits and risks of employing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning in nuclear command and control systems? Dr Ben Zala will argue that it is only by placing developments in AI against the larger backdrop of the increasing prominence of a much wider set of strategic non-nuclear capabilities that this question can be adequately addressed. In order to do so, he will make the case for disaggregating the different risks that AI poses to stability as well as examine the specific ways in which it may instead be harnessed to restabilise nuclear-armed relationships. Dr Zala will also identify a number of policy areas that ought to be prioritised by way of mitigating the risks and harnessing the opportunities identified in the short-medium term. 

About the speaker
Ben Zala is a Fellow in the Department of International Relations, Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs at ANU. His work focuses on the politics of the great powers and the management of nuclear weapons. He has been a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at Harvard University and is currently an Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester, UK contributing to the Third Nuclear Age project (https://thethirdnuclearage.com/).

About the chair
Toni Erskine is Professor of International Politics in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University (ANU), and Associate Fellow of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at Cambridge University. She is Chief Investigator of the Defence-funded 'Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making' Research Project and a Chief Investigator and Founding Member of the 'Humanising Machine Intelligence' Grand Challenge at ANU.

This seminar series is part of a two-year (2023-2025) research project on Anticipating the Future of War: AI, Automated Systems, and Resort-to-Force Decision Making, generously funded by the Australian Department of Defence and led by Professor Toni Erskine from the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs.

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