Description
This paper examines artificial intelligence (AI) as an expeditor of changing conflict opportunity structures. While there is debate on AI and international security regarding military purpose and autonomous weapons, this paper concerns the role of AI in the diffusion of disruptive capability. The technology can potentially lower barriers of expertise, expenses, scale, and speed that have historically constrained participation in cyber, informational, and influence operations as state only activities. This opens a possibility of the democratisation of conflict opportunity. It does not create parity between states and non-state actors, nor does it independently cause conflict. AI has the potential to expand the range of actors capable of generating politically and socially significant disruption.
Through conceptual framework, the paper understands AI-enabled disruption as a symptom of changing accessibility of conflict. Enabling actors with fewer resources to produce malicious code, automated propaganda, and targeted manipulation at a greater pace and lower cost, AI can expedite conditions for hostile activity. Capability diffusion can create opportunities for non-state actors, proxy groups, criminal networks, and smaller states to exploit vulnerabilities and destabilise political environments. In a changing world, this has significant implications for how International Relations understands the relationship between technological developments and conflict.