The United States has launched an international initiative for the responsible military use of artificial intelligence

UNITED STATES launched an initiative on Thursday that promotes the international cooperation on the responsible use of artificial intelligence and autonomous weapons by the military, seeking to impose order on an emerging technology that has the potential to change the way war is fought.

“As a rapidly evolving technology, we have an obligation to create strict standards of responsible behavior regarding military uses of AI and in a way that recognizes that military applications of AI will undoubtedly change in the coming years,” he said. Bonnie JenkinsUnder-Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security.

The official also said that the US policy statement, which contains non-legally binding guidelines outlining the best practices for responsible military use of AI, “this can be a focal point for international cooperation.”

Jenkins released the statement at the end of a two-day conference in The Hague who took on additional urgency as advances in drone technology amid Russia’s war in Ukraine have accelerated a trend that could soon bring the world’s first fully autonomous combat robots to the battlefield.

The US statement has 12 pointsincluding that military uses of AI are consistent with international law, and that it stipulates “maintain human control and participation in all critical actions to inform and execute sovereign decisions related to the use of nuclear weapons”.

Zachary Kallenborn, a weapons innovation analyst at George Mason University who attended the conference in The Hague, said the US decision to adopt its approach on the international stage “recognizes that there are these autonomous weapons concerns. That’s significant in itself.”

Kallenborn said it was also important for Washington to include a call for human control of the nuclear weapons “Because when it comes to the risks of autonomous weapons, I think that’s by far the highest risk you can have.”

Underscoring the international sense of urgency around AI and autonomous weapons, 60 nations, including United States and Chinamade a call to action at the Hague conference calling for broad cooperation on the development and responsible military use of artificial intelligence.

“We are in time to mitigate the risks and prevent the AI ​​from getting out of control, and we have time to stop AI from taking us where we just don’t want to be,” the Dutch foreign minister said, Wopke Hoekstra.

The call to action issued in the Netherlands highlighted “the importance of ensuring adequate safeguards and human oversight of the use of AI systems, taking into account human limitations due to time constraints and of capacity”.

Participating nations also called on countries to “develop national frameworks, strategies and principles on responsible AI in the military.”

Military analysts and artificial intelligence researchers say the longer Ukraine’s nearly year-long war lasts, the more likely it is that drones will be used to identify, select and attack targets without the help of humans.

Ukrainian Minister of Digital Transformation Mykhailo Fedorov told the news agency PA in a recent interview that fully autonomous killer drones they are “a logical and inevitable next step” in weapons development. He said Ukraine was doing “a lot of research and development in this direction”.

Ukraine already has semi-autonomous attack drones and weapons versus AI-powered drones. Russia also claims to possess AI weapons, although the claims are unproven. But there are no confirmed cases of a nation hiring robots that single-handedly killed.

Russia was not invited to attend the Hague conference.

The Chinese Ambassador to the Netherlands, Tan Jianattended and said that Beijing had sent two documents to the United Nations on the regulation of military applications of artificial intelligence, saying that the problem “concerns common security and the well-being of mankind, which requires the response united of all countries,” said the Asian.

(With AP information)

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