Perspective.
Technologies like artificial intelligence are changing our understanding of war
Artificial intelligence (AI) is widely regarded as a disruptive technology because it has the potential to fundamentally alter social relationships. AI has affected how people understand the world, the jobs available in the workforce and judgments of who merits employment or threatens society.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in warfare, which is defined by social and technological processes. Technologies such as autonomous weapon systems (AWS) and cyberweapons have the potential to change conflicts and combat forever.
Justifying warfare
Acts of violence committed in war are often framed in virtuous terms, with justice and other morality motivations used to legitimate armed conflict.
Yet “just wars” require both clear definitions of who is a combatant and clear distinctions between war and peace. When such distinctions are eroded, this leads to total wars — all against all. Boundaries between civilians and soldiers and military and domestic infrastructure are blurred, making everyone and everything a legitimate target. We might believe that total wars are a thing of the past, involving Mongolian hordes or trench warfare, but recent discussions of technology’s impact on warfare have breathed new life into the concept.
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