A WORLD OF “KNIT ROBOTS” AND THE NEED TO THEM ANTICIPATED

 

The possibility of early deployment of autonomous lethal weapons on battlefields presents an urgent need to take global action to regulate these technologies

 

It is the conclusion of a new book entitled “The Military Carrer of AI: Good Common Governance in the Age of Artificial Intelligence” written by Dennise Garcia, professor of political science and international affairs at the University of Northeastern, who was part of the International Panel for the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons from 2017 to 2022.

As artificial intelligence progresses, weapons of was increasingly become capable of killing people without meaningful human supervision, raising troubling questions about how today’s and tomorrow’s wars will take place, and how autonomous weapons systems could weaken accountability when it comes to possible violations of international law accompanying their deployment.

In his book, Denise Garcia condenses these bleak realities and explores the challenges of “creating a global governance framework” that anticipates a world of unbridled AI weapons systems in the context of the deterioration of international law and norms. Thus, he highlights that military AI applications have already been implemented in the ongoing conflicts in Europe and the Middle East, one of the most famous examples of this is the Iraeli Iron Dome.

“The world must come together and create new global public goods, which I would say should include a framework for governing AI, but also commonly agreed rules on the use of AI in the military” Garcia said in a statement from his university.

This expert warns that speeding up militarized AI as such is not the right approach and risks adding more volatility to an already very unstable international system. “Simply pit, AI should not be trusted to make decisions about war”, he says.

Some 4,500 AI and robotics researchers have collectively said AI should not make decisions about human murder, a position, Garcia says, which is in line with European Parliament guidelines and European Union regulation. But U.S officials have pushed for a regulatory paradigm of rigorous testing and designs so that humans can use artificial intelligence technology “to make the decision to kill”.

“This seems good on paper, but it’s very difficult to achieve in reality, as algorithms are unlikely to assimilate the enormous complexity of what happens in war”, Garcia says.

AI weapons systems not only threaten to alter accountability standards under international law, but also make war crimes prosecution much more difficult because of problems associated with the attribution of “combat status” to AI’s “counterbeth” Garcia says.

“International law has evolved to focus on the human being”, he says. “When a robot or software is inserted into the equation, who will be responsible?”.

He continues: “The difficulties of attribution of responsibly will accelerate the dehumanization of war. When humans are reduced to date, human dignity will dissipate”:

Existing AI and quasi-AI military applications have already caused sensation in defense circles. One of those applications allows a single person to control multiple unmanned system, according to a source, such as a swarm of drones capable of attacking by air or under the sea. In the war in Ukraine, marauding munition have sparked a debate about exactly how much control human agents have over decisions on targets.

Some dinosaurs slept in the same posture as birds

 

The posture of a new species of almost complete fossil dinosaur dug in Mongolia reveals that it curled up to sleep in a similar way of that of modern birds.

With the creature’s head tucked into her limbs and the tail comfortably wrapped around her body, her cosy posture resembled that of modern birds at rest, hinting that these dinosaurs not only looked like birds, but could also have behaved like them.

Paleontologists dug the dinosaurs skull and almost complete skeleton in the Gobi Desert, in the Goyo Barun Formation in Mongolia, and most of the bone were still arranged in the animal’s original death pose, which had to lose its life while sleeping, researchers reported in the journal PLOS ONE.

The animal’s long neck wrapped the right side of its trunk and its head was stuck to its side, leaning on the right knee. The rear limbs were bent underneath and most of the tail curved around the left side of the body.

The study authors identified him as an Alvarezsaurid, a type of small theropod (carnivorous bipedo adipine) with long tail and legs and short front limbs. Alvarezsauridos are part of a larger group of dinosaurs  called mainraptorans, which includes bird-like birds and dinosaurs that were their closest relatives.

The new fossil suggests that this sleeping behaviour may have been more common than expected among non-avian relatives of the first birds, the researchers reported.