I would be open to persuasion on nuclear risk, but it seems like a difficult plan to me. There are only a few nations with sufficient arsenals to trigger a nuclear exchange, and they all require human beings to launch the nukes. I would be interested if someone could make the case for AI+nuclear, though.
I am no expert in this but can think of an AI directly convincing people with launch access. Or deepfakes pretending to be their commander and probably many other scenarios. What if new nukes being built are using AI in hardware design and AI sneaks in some cyber backdoor with which to get control of the nuke?
There are meant to be a lot of procedures in place to ensure that an order to launch nukes is genuine, and to ensure that a nuke can’t be launched without the direct cooperation of the head of state and the military establishment. Convincing one person wouldn’t be enough, unless that one person was the president, and even then, the order may be disobeyed if it comes off as insane. As for the last part, if you get “control of a nuke” while it’s sitting in a bunker somewhere, all you can do is blow up the bunker, which doesn’t do anything.
The most likely scenario seems to be some sort of stanislav petrov scenario, where you falsely convince people that a first strike is occurring and that they need to respond immediately. Or that there are massive security holes somewhere that can be overcome.
I would be open to persuasion on nuclear risk, but it seems like a difficult plan to me. There are only a few nations with sufficient arsenals to trigger a nuclear exchange, and they all require human beings to launch the nukes. I would be interested if someone could make the case for AI+nuclear, though.
I am no expert in this but can think of an AI directly convincing people with launch access. Or deepfakes pretending to be their commander and probably many other scenarios. What if new nukes being built are using AI in hardware design and AI sneaks in some cyber backdoor with which to get control of the nuke?
There are meant to be a lot of procedures in place to ensure that an order to launch nukes is genuine, and to ensure that a nuke can’t be launched without the direct cooperation of the head of state and the military establishment. Convincing one person wouldn’t be enough, unless that one person was the president, and even then, the order may be disobeyed if it comes off as insane. As for the last part, if you get “control of a nuke” while it’s sitting in a bunker somewhere, all you can do is blow up the bunker, which doesn’t do anything.
The most likely scenario seems to be some sort of stanislav petrov scenario, where you falsely convince people that a first strike is occurring and that they need to respond immediately. Or that there are massive security holes somewhere that can be overcome.