The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in warfare presents a dynamic spectrum of risks and benefits.
While AI promises enhanced battlefield efficiency and potentially reduces human casualties, its potential for misuse and unforeseen consequences raises, or should raise, grave concerns for the mankind at large.
AI offers opportunities for improved targeting and effectiveness, but its vulnerabilities and ethical implications demand cautious deliberation. How bad things can go has been shown by Israel, which has been violating all the relevant international laws.
Israel is using Habsora, an AI-based system. The system, also called the ‘mass assassination factory’, enables the army to generate targets quicker than before to kill on a mass level even when looking for a single target. The emphasis is on quantity, not quality. The system focusses on the area where the target may be present, and kill all present there. The use of Habsora explains the reasons for Palestinians deaths in such huge numbers.
It has been established that respon-sibility to find a target has been delegated to a computer programme rather than a sentient entity capable of reasoning through moral and ethical quandaries and adhering to international laws. This is an alarming situation for the world because apparently the day when the world would come face-to-face with the horrors of AI warfare does not seem far.
ZAHID SHAHANI
KARACHI
