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This article originally appeared in Georgetown Journal of International Affairs Blog.

 

Emerging technologies and their possible implications for ethics, security, and even human existence have increasingly gained ground in the past two decades. Some innovations have resulted in obvious security and existential threats: a world with nuclear arms, for example. The potential of other technological shifts, however, has been more mixed. Biotechnologies, genetic engineering, and stems cells have given rise to controversial debates in which advocacy groups on both sides have convincingly put forward pros and cons. The Internet has revolutionized everything from markets to family communication in ways both beneficial and harmful. The age of artificial Intelligence (AI) has shown itself to be similarly Janus-like in its potential to alter our lives both positively and negatively. On the one hand, AI has demonstrated its usefulness in predictive speech and typing software, robotics, and unmanned aircraft technology. On the other, these and many other AI-enabled platforms raise profound concerns about oversight.

AI is also unique among emergent technologies because it can learn and evolve without human input. This fact alone demands a policy approach that recognizes not only the immediate implications of AI itself but also what might happen because of the potential range of resultant technologies. In short, AI poses challenges for security and policymaking not merely of magnitude but of precedent. Further, AI forces us to consider our relationship with technology in ways that were never previously relevant—including the possibility of entering into competition with, and even being superseded by, our own creations.

The advent of AI brings with it numerous implications for the futures of global security, conflicts, and human dignity. The extensive use of drones, both for military and commercial purposes, is a rightly controversial current debate. But the uses of AI in unmanned aircraft are mere glimmers of what is to come. In the later stages of the industrial revolution, industrialization in factories rendered some jobs previously performed by human beings obsolete. AI appears to portend the inevitable complete removal of human beings from combat scenarios in numerous military-strategic areas.

AI applications facilitate real-time adaptation to contingencies without requiring the presence of people on the ground. Unmanned drones, for instance, are used to provide continuous surveillance and small robots are deployed in missions to counter improvised explosive devices.  U.S. Army researchers  are now working to develop intelligent robots that can successfully navigate in different environments by following voice commands and instructions by a human. Furthermore, the  U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency  (DARPA) launched an AI program in 2013 to help integrate machine-learning capacity in a wide variety of military weapons. Other teams of scientists are now exploring ways to create robots with a moral compasses and in-built  senses of right or wrong  that have the ability to pick the ethical course of action on the battlefield.

Two immediate consequences of this transition to battlefield AI are especially noteworthy. The first reflects the relative ease of convincing the public or another decision-making body to engage in violent conflict in cases where the use of AI technology assures minimal human casualties. Given that President Obama’s  strategy  to “degrade and ultimately destroy” the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), for example, attempted to explicitly avoid committing further on-the-ground American troops, wars that do not involve risk of bodily harm to soldiers continue to be much easier sells to both the public and to government bodies. These assurances are potentially problematic not only because they tend to work against even the most circumspect evaluation of a war’s justness, but also because they encourage a point of view that underestimates the destabilizing effect of all military engagements, regardless of battlefield casualties. This point of view often overlooks warfare’s terrible track record of noncombatant casualties and harm to nonmilitary parties. The history of recorded warfare demonstrates that far more civilians than soldiers have died as a result of military engagements, a trend that has significantly worsened in the era of modern technology. This fact alone should evidence a need for additional reflection about the part AI will play in the future of warfare.

A related area of concern is the role of judgment regarding entry into and conduct during interstate conflict ( jus ad bellum and jus in bello ). Any AI machine expected to make decisions in war should pass some variation of the  Turing test , which was devised by British mathematician Alan Turing in 1950 to assess whether a particular machine exhibits intelligence equivalent to or beyond that of a human. But the worry is that a robotic soldier or a sufficiently sophisticated AI drone could easily pass a version of the Turing test and yet utterly fail to uphold  jus in bello ’s fundamental commitment to non-combatant immunity, or  jus ad bellum ’s supposed principal of non-aggression. Therefore, if AI is to play a role in military engagement, this potential must be closely monitored and constrained by international norms.

Second, as I have  previously argued , a heavy reliance on AI machines would create further inequalities in war because of the unequal availability of such technologies to certain countries. This will make the outcome of interstate conflict far more directly a matter of superior technology and which nations or peoples have the resources to attain it. This availability gap could serve to exacerbate and reinforce preexisting global inequalities. This could also conceivably result in asymmetric battlefield casualties where countries that have access to AI technology will suffer fewer human losses compared to those countries that do not. Other questions about AI’s use and application are relevant too. Could conscious machines be sensitive to human welfare? Could they replicate the human motivation to cooperate in order to avoid  the “state of nature ,” which Hobbes defined as a state of a perpetual war and lack of effective higher authority to arbitrate disputes? How can we expect robots to understand, relate to, and execute the basic norms of social cooperation and political order?

Beyond its potential military applications, the nature and use of AI should also be monitored and regulated in non-combat settings. AI has achieved an almost ubiquitous presence in our everyday lives in the machines and applications we use in the workplace, at home, and beyond. Learning software, like the popular “Swipe” texting key—an app that learns user’s tendency to use particular words and phrases and becomes predictive of what a user is trying to say or is about to say next—is an example of the sort of AI that is coming to play a significant role in everyday life. A similar technology, developed by Intel, is responsible for the speech-assistance software used by British physicist Stephen Hawking, whose degenerative ALS rendered him unable to speak unassisted by machinery in 1985. Nevertheless, while acknowledging the benefit he receives from AI, Hawking has vocalized concerns that complete AI could bring about  the end of the human race . With the capacity to learn and improve at near-limitless rates, full AIs would quickly become superior to human beings, constrained as we are by long and slow evolutionary processes.

While the dystopian vision of runaway or out-of-control AI still appears like something out of science fiction, today’s rate of technological innovation serves as a reminder that we may be headed in that direction. The collective of hackers and activists known as Anonymous has demonstrated the fearsome capacity of AI programs even at their current stage of development: at the outset of the Arab Spring in 2011, leading members of the group clogged the networks of Tunisia’s governing regime. Within 24 hours,  the websites  of the president, prime minister, and that of the Tunisian stock exchange had been brought down. Simple AI can learn to avoid spam filters, avoid fraud detection, and disguise itself as various different forms of online protocol. And these features are minimal compared to the more advanced capabilities to which AI might lead—the ability of a fully AI machine to make strategic decisions about which governments to isolate or which weapons systems to activate, for instance.

Regardless of how close to or far from the realization of such capabilities we are, the fact that the possibility exists in principle should motivate dialogue and careful control over the development of AI. Alongside environmental degradation and large-scale human rights violations, artificial intelligence represents yet another critical challenge that requires interstate collaboration and the shoring up of international law to preserve the safety and dignity of human beings in both our contemporary and future world.

 

 

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EDA Chief Executive Jorge Domecq travelled to the Czech Republic on 10 April to exchange views with Deputy Minister of Defence Daniel Kostoval ahead of the June 2015 European Council. Together they discussed Czech Republic’s participation in EDA activities as well as the country’s priorities in terms of capability development, regional cooperation and support to the defence industry.

The Deputy Minister of Defence stressed the pivotal role of the European Defence Agency in facilitating and managing cooperative defence projects. "The participating Member States should more engage in harmonization of demand and synchronization of procurement using the incentives offered by the EDA. To achieve more tangible results in the development of European defence capabilities, we must address the issue of defence spending during the June Council. We should also empower the EDA and support an increase in EDA´s budget for 2016”, Daniel Kostoval underlined during the meeting.

 

The European approach

“The Czech Republic is already involved in many activities carried out by the European Defence Agency, such as education & training, field hospitals or pooled procurement through the multinational Carl-Gustaf ammunition contract. Major issues such as security of supply or support to the European defence technological and industrial base (EDTIB), including efforts in favor of a balanced EDTIB, can also be tackled through the EDA’s framework. To this specific end the EDA will dedicate a roundtable to the defence industries of Central and Eastern European countries during the IDET defence exhibition which will take place next month in Brno.

During my visit here, I also had the chance to get a glimpse at some of Czech Republic’s industrial capabilities and I am convinced that the European approach can be greatly beneficial to local actors. Our flexible structure allows us to meet a wide spectrum of demands from our Member States, including through regional cooperation”, Jorge Domecq said during his visit. 

The visit is part of a series of visits by Mr. Domecq to all EDA Member States following his appointment as EDA Chief Executive and ahead of the Ministerial Steering Board on 18 May 2015. So far, Mr. Domecq visited Spain, Lithuania, Latvia, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Germany, Portugal, the Netherlands, Ireland, France, Romania and Bulgaria.

More information

• News "EDA Chief Executive travels to Romania" (8 April 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive meets French Minister of Defence" (30 March 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq exchanges views with Irish Minister of Defence Simon Coveney T.D." (25 March 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits The Netherlands" (23 March 2015)
• News "Discussions on European defence in Portugal" (19 March 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq meets German Secretary of State" (19 March 2015)
• News "Belgium and EDA discuss future defence cooperation" (18 March 2015)
• News "Jorge Domecq in the UK for cooperation talks" (25 Feb 2015)
• News "Latvia and EDA discuss cooperation opportunities" (19 Feb 2015)
• News "EDA Chief Executive visits Lithuania" (17 Feb 2015) 

Bonn, 13.04.2015. Flucht und Vertreibung bleiben ein dominierendes Thema der öffentlichen Wahrnehmung und des politischen Diskurses in Deutschland und Europa. Das äußert sich unter anderem im andauernden Streit zwischen Bund und Ländern über vermeintlich unrealistische Flüchtlingszahl-Prognosen, der Fremdenhass-Debatte nach dem Brandanschlag auf eine designierte Flüchtlingsunterkunft in Sachsen-Anhalt oder in der Drohung des griechischen Verteidigungsministers, Flüchtlinge nach Deutschland „weiterzuleiten“. Auf den ersten Blick hat dies nur wenig mit den Bemühungen der Europäischen Union (EU) zu tun, die Finanzmärkte neu zu regulieren. Aktuell berät der Europäische Wirtschafts- und Sozialausschuss über eine Neufassung und Erweiterung der Richtlinie zu Zahlungsdiensten und der Verordnung über grenzüberschreitende Zahlungen (Payment Settlements Directive II). Diese betrifft auch Rücküberweisungen, also Bargeldtransfers von Migranten und Flüchtlingen an ihre Familien in den jeweiligen Herkunftsländern. Eine Neufassung dieser Richtlinie, welche die teilweise sehr hohen Gebühren für Rücküberweisungen senken würde, könnte einen großen entwicklungspolitischen Beitrag leisten. Gerade Deutschland sollte hier eine Schlüsselrolle einnehmen. Das Volumen von Rücküberweisungen in Entwicklungsländer wird 2015 geschätzte 450 Mrd. USD erreichen und übertrifft damit bei Weitem die internationale Entwicklungshilfe. Auch Flüchtlinge selbst tragen zu diesen Geldflüssen bei, indem sie Rücküberweisungen tätigen und ihre Verwandten sowohl in den Herkunftsländern als auch in Asyl gewährenden Nachbarländern unterstützen. Der Libanon, Jordanien und auch Syrien selbst weisen seit 2011 stark gestiegene Rücküberweisungen aufgrund des Bürgerkrieges in Syrien auf. Rücküberweisungen werden dabei nicht nur für den Erwerb von Lebensmitteln verwendet. Sie werden auch für Gesundheits- und Bildungsausgaben sowie für die Kompensation von Schäden und Verlusten, die durch Konflikte aber auch Wirtschaftskrisen oder Umweltkatastrophen entstanden sind, genutzt. Rücküberweisungen sind in der Regel antizyklisch: Sie steigen in Zeiten politischer und wirtschaftlicher Krisen, da Migranten gerade dann ihre Familien in den Herkunftsländern verstärkt unterstützen. In dauerhaft instabilen Ländern sind Rücküberweisungen geradezu überlebenswichtig. Wenn die rechtliche Situation oder die Arbeits- und Lebensbedingungen von Migranten und Flüchtlingen prekär sind, fällt es ihnen allerdings schwer, die Entwicklung in ihren Herkunftsländern mithilfe von Rücküberweisungen zu unterstützen. Die positiven Effekte von Rücküberweisungen werden aber auch sehr durch hohe Transaktionskosten beeinträchtigt. In Deutschland liegen diese Kosten im Durchschnitt bei 9 %, was nur leicht über dem Mittelwert aller G20-Länder von etwa 8 % liegt. Allerdings sind die Gebühren für den Geldtransfer in bestimmte Länder deutlich höher. Für den Transfer von 140 € von Deutschland in den Libanon mussten beispielsweise Ende 2014 im Schnitt – gemessen an den Angeboten der verschiedenen Finanzdienstleister –rund 23 € an Gebühren ausgeben werden. Die oft ohnehin schon relativ niedrigen Bargeldtransfers werden so stark geschmälert. Ein Großteil der Rücküberweisungen wird von Anbietern von Bargeldtransfers wie zum Beispiel Western Union durchgeführt. Zur Abwicklung der Zahlung müssen diese Institutionen Zugang zum inländischen Zahlungssystem haben. Dieser erfolgt entweder direkt oder indirekt über ein Konto bei einer Bank, die dem Zahlungssystem angehört. Daher könnten ein verbesserter Zugang der Anbieter von Bargeldtransfers zu den Zahlungssystemen, eine konsistente Regulierung aller Zahlungsdienstleister und ein damit verbundener stärkerer Wettbewerb zu einer weiteren Reduzierung der Kosten für Rücküberweisungen führen. Eine entsprechende Neufassung der ‚Zahlungsdiensterichtlinie‘ hätte hier enormes Potential und auch eine weltweite Signalwirkung. Deutschland sollte dabei mit gutem Beispiel vorangehen. Denn Deutschland steht in der Liste der Länder, aus denen laut Angaben der Weltbank weltweit die meisten Gelder von Migranten in ihre Herkunftsländer fließen, auf einem beachtlichen fünften Platz mit über 20 Mrd. USD. Das beantwortet – ein weiteres Mal – die seit Jahren diskutierte Frage, ob Deutschland denn ein Einwanderungsland sei, mit einem eindeutigen „ja“. Es zeigt aber auch, dass Zuwanderung ebenfalls eine enorme Bedeutung für die Herkunftsländer der Migranten und Flüchtlinge hat. Leider neigen gerade die Deutschen dazu, die Auswirkungen von Migration und Flucht auf die eigene Gesellschaft und Volkswirtschaft zu reduzieren. Die Transaktionskosten für Rücküberweisungen zu senken, wäre ein wichtiges entwicklungspolitisches Signal. Es würde unterstreichen, dass Deutschland sein Streben nach mehr globaler Verantwortung nicht nur militärisch interpretieren möchte. Und für Europa wäre es ein Schritt, der wegführt von einer Flüchtlingspolitik, die nur auf Abschreckung setzt.

Sweden’s BAE Systems (H&a

Lockheed Martin Canada has been awarded the implementation subcontract by Irving Shipbuilding Inc. as command and surveillance system integrator for the Royal Canadian Navy's (RCN) new class of Arctic Offshore Patrol Ships (AOPS). Lockheed

Turkey is moving forward with plans to acquire 15 KT-1T basic trainer aircraft from South Korea for around $150 million, according to Turkish Defense Minister Ismet Yilmaz reports Defense News. The government is importing the KT-1T as a stop-gap to meet its trainer

In response to my recent article, Assessing the Security Agenda in United States–Caribbean Relations , I was asked to consider the current bilateral polit

Sweden’s BAE Systems (H&a

The first Italian F-35A has rol

Top 10 Amphibious Assault Ships

(Own report) - Berlin seeks to use Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's current visit to Germany to strengthen India's ties to the western camp in the West's struggle for global influence against Russia and China. Years ago, the Federal Republic of Germany had established a "Strategic Partnership" with this Southern Asian nation. This partnership will now to be reinforced, particularly at the economic level. Recently, New Delhi has expanded not only its cooperation with some of the western countries, but above all, it has strengthened its ties to Russia and China. India does not participate in the west-imposed sanctions on Moscow, but does participate in the foundation of global institutions - including the BRICS-Development Bank as well as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) - opposing the existing western hegemony. Western strategists' plans of pitting New Delhi against Beijing, to insure western global hegemony, have been unsuccessful so far. Berlin now seeks to relaunch the effort.

German Mercedes-Benz Vito Light Utility Vehicle

A 2003-ban alapított NLC Tanácsadói Csoport Kft. (a palyazatihirek.eu honlap üzemeltetője) az uniós forrásokra épülő beruházások egyik elismert szakértője.   100% magyar magántulajdonú vállalkozás vagyunk, mind a privát mind a közszférából számos ügyfelünk részére segítettünk megvalósítani sikeres beruházásokat az elmúlt években európai uniós és hazai forrásból. 

 

...mais après plus de trois ans de négociations

A Fidesz népszerűsége tovább esett, sok kérdésre ad választ a vasárnapi tapolcai időközi választás.

A Fidesz népszerűsége tovább esett, sok kérdésre ad választ a vasárnapi tapolcai időközi választás.

A kommunisták elleni „harc” Ukrajnában szintet lépett.

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Une chronique historique