Description
Can AI solve the ethical-political dilemmas of warfare? How is artificial intelligence (AI) enabled warfare changing the way we think about the ethical-political dilemmas and practice of war? This article explores the central elements of the ethical and political dilemmas of human-machine interactions in modern digitized warfare. While much of the present debate has revolved around ethical and legal concerns about fielding lethal robots (or "killer robots") into armed conflict, less attention focuses on AI-enabled warfare's ethical, moral, and psychological dilemmas. The article fills a gap in discussions of complex socio-technical interactions between AI and warfare. It offers a counterpoint to the argument that AI 'rational' efficiency can simultaneously offer a viable solution to humans' psychological and biological fallibility in combat while retaining 'meaningful' human control over the war machine. This Panglossian assumption neglects the psychology of human-machine interactions, the speed AI-enabled future wars will be fought, and the complex and chaotic nature of modern war. The article expounds key psychological insights of human-machine interactions to elucidate how AI shapes our capacity to think about future warfare's political and ethical dilemmas. It argues that through the psychological process of human-machine integration, AI will not merely force multiply existing advanced weaponry but will become de facto strategic actors in warfare – the ‘AI commander problem.’
