The Promise and Threat of Artificial Intelligence

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The growing development in artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is both reassuring and concerning. The use of such technologies ranges from autonomous weapon systems (AWS) to facial recognition and decision making algorithms. The benefits are clear, but the comprehension of the risks involved are just as important for the future of human life.
The reality is that any new AI innovation might be used for both beneficial and harmful purposes: any single algorithm that may provide important economic applications might also lead to the production of unprecedented weapons of mass destruction on a scale that is difficult to fathom. As a result, the concerns about artificial intelligence-based automation are growing, according to forbes.com.
With the advances in machine learning, computing power, borderless investment and data availability, AI has potentially universal applications, a fact that exponentially complicates the security risks involved. Moreover, since integration of AI is invisible to the human eye, the ability to cognitize anything and everything fundamentally changes the security landscape.
The evolution of computing technologies has democratized technological development, knowledge, information and intelligence. The rapid growth of data analytics and processing technology position cyber, electronic, quantum and autonomous weapons alongside nuclear, biological and nanoweapons in the elite club of weapons capable of unleashing catastrophic harm to humanity.
This is because connected computers, networks and cyberspace have become an integral part of all digital processes. Since computer code and connected computers have connected cyberspace to geospace and space, everything is now controlled or goes through cyberspace.
Since AI has the potential to be integrated into virtually every product and service across cyberspace, geospace and space (CGS) to make them intelligent, this evolving cognitive ability fundamentally changes the security landscape for humanity across CGS.
When anyone and everyone has access to digital data, necessary machine learning techniques and computing power to create AI for their own agenda, it’s difficult to manage the complex security challenges that emerge. Not only are the numbers of potential weapons of mass destruction growing, so are the attack surface and the enemies. The security risks emerging from the threat of dual use of AI is becoming dire.
As digital data in cyberspace becomes contested commons, the democratization of big data ushers in a completely new world order. This new world order brings us a new reality — where anyone from anywhere could access digital data and use it for the good or bad of humanity. Today, any individual or entity who has a desire and knows how to access big data and has data science capabilities can use it for whatever intelligence, automation, surveillance and reconnaissance they want to achieve, irrespective of their education, background, standing or intentions in society.
While the democratization of big data brings universal accessibility and empowers individuals and entities, it also brings us many critical security risks. Anyone with or without formal training, can accidentally or even purposefully cause chaos, catastrophe and existential risks to all aspects of everyday life.
The notion that traditional security is about violence towards respective nations in geospace from within or across its geographical boundaries is now outdated and needs to be evaluated and updated.
The emergence of this completely new world of AI has been more or less like an alien territory today where there are few knowns and mostly unknowns. This has triggered fear, uncertainty, competition and an arms race and is leading us toward a new battlefield that has no boundaries or borders, which may or may not involve humans and will be impossible to understand and perhaps control.
The challenges and complexities of evolving AI threats and security have crossed the barriers of space, ideology and politics, demanding a constructive collaborative effort of all stakeholders across nations.