Technology and tactics: The intersection of safety, AI, and the resort to force

Discussing AI, Automated Systems, and the Future of War Seminar Series

Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly being incorporated into military decision-making in the form of decision-support systems (DSS). Such systems may offer data-informed suggestions to those responsible for making decisions regarding the resort to force. While DSS are not new in military contexts, we argue that AI-enabled DSS are sources of additional complexity in an already complex resort-to-force decision-making process that – by its very nature – presents the dual potential for both strategic stability and harm. We present three categories of complexity relevant to AI – interactive and nonlinear complexity, software complexity, and dynamic complexity – and examine how such categories introduce or exacerbate risks in resort-to-force decision-making. We then provide policy recommendations that aim to mitigate some of these risks in practice.

Speaker
Elizabeth Williams is a Nuclear Systems Discipline Lead in the School of Engineering at The Australian National University (ANU). She is a nuclear physicist by training, with a PhD in nuclear physics from Yale. She joined ANU in 2012 and has held an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award Fellowship in nuclear reactions. Her current research focuses on the responsible integration of AI-enabled systems in safety-critical contexts.


Chair
Toni Erskine is Professor of International Politics in the Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, The 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.

Acknowledgement
This paper was co-authored with Dr Zena Assaad, Senior Lecturer in the School of Engineering at The Australian National University.

This seminar series is part of a 2.5-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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