“Alexa, Launch Our Nukes!”

“Alexa, Launch Our Nukes!”

Within a few short years, crucial warfighting decisions — even whether to launch a nuclear weapon — could be made by autonomous machines.

By Michael Klare, December 19, 2018. Originally published in TomDispatch.

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There could be no more consequential decision than launching atomic weapons and possibly triggering a nuclear holocaust.

President John F. Kennedy faced just such a moment during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 and, after envisioning the catastrophic outcome of a U.S.-Soviet nuclear exchange, he came to the conclusion that the atomic powers should impose tough barriers on the precipitous use of such weaponry. Among the measures he and other global leaders adopted were guidelines requiring that senior officials, not just military personnel, have a role in any nuclear-launch decision.

That was then, of course, and this is now. And what a now it is!

With artificial intelligence, or AI, soon to play an ever-increasing role in military affairs, as in virtually everything else in our lives, the role of humans, even in nuclear decision-making, is likely to be progressively diminished. In fact, in some future AI-saturated world, it could disappear entirely, leaving machines to determine humanity’s fate.

This isn’t idle conjecture based on science fiction movies or dystopian novels. It’s all too real, all too here and now, or at least here and soon to be.