Warfare in the digital age has taken place alongside many technological advancements. As the weapons of war continually evolve, ingenuity itself becomes a source of scrutiny. We saw that last week when exploding pagers and walkie-talkies were to blame for 25 deaths and more than 600 injuries in Lebanon — attacks believed to be carried out by Israel.
But perhaps the most insidious development in modern warfare, many experts have pointed out, is the prospect of autonomous weapons systems — weapons that deploy artificial intelligence to destroy targets and carry out killings without direct human control. It was the subject of AI military applications that brought world leaders, academics, civil society organizations and AI experts together earlier this month in Seoul, South Korea, for a summit — one that represented yet another step in a multistakeholder effort to develop a global governance framework for the responsible use of AI across civilian and military contexts.
