News Briefing 4-15 March 2024

Autonomy in weapons systems, and AI in security and defence

• Ukraine: Drones Are Transforming The Battlefield In Ukraine But In An Evolutionary Fashion: Writing on the use of drones with varying autonomous capabilities in Ukraine, Stacie Pettyjohn (senior fellow and director of the Defense Program at the Center for a New American Security) notes that many news items on autonomous functionalities ‘generally lack precision and as a result create false impressions about the level and type of autonomy that exists on the battlefield’. Pettyjohn further notes that ‘the vast majority of drones in the war in Ukraine are remotely piloted, and humans not machines remain the interface that manually coordinates the actions of multiple drones’.
• Gaza/Israel: Gaza Becomes Israel’s Testing Ground for Military Robots: Haaretz reports on the use of robots by the Israeli military in Gaza. The military robots mentioned in this article do not appear to be weaponized robots; they are ‘dog-shaped walking robots’ with a small surveillance drone-type robot installed on the back of the walking robot. The robots’ primary use, according to this article, is ‘for initial surveillance of buildings, open spaces and tunnels.’ As Stop Killer Robots has noted, ‘while the robots and systems in question do not appear to be weaponized, the increasing use of robots in conflict should serve as a significant warning and call to action to the international community about the need for urgent progress in their efforts to ensure meaningful human control over the use of force.’
• France: AI: “Either the French army sets a date or it fails,” says Sébastien Lecornu: The French Minister of the Armed Forces, Sébastien Lecornu, has announced the creation of a new ministerial agency dedicated to the use of AI in defence. Minister Lecornu has said that the objective is that France will become ‘the number 1’ in Europe for military AI, and ‘in the top 3 worldwide’ (note that this article is in French). 
• US: Targeting time shrinks from minutes to seconds in Army experiment: DefenseOne reports that U.S. soldiers ‘found targets in a tiny fraction of the normal time by streamlining procedures and speeding up data processing during a recent experiment’, and notes that the U.S. Army is seeing a ‘“two orders of magnitude” increase in the speed at which data is passed to weapons crews since the first Project Convergence’.
• US: Palantir wins US Army contract for battlefield AI: The U.S. Army has awarded software company Palantir a $178.4 million contract to build a ‘battlefield intelligence system’ which is ‘designed to access space, high altitude, aerial, and terrestrial sensors to “provide actionable targeting information for enhanced mission command and long range precision fires”’, according to a statement from Palantir. Palantir also stated that ‘the TITAN project ‘seeks to enhance the automation of target recognition and geolocation from multiple sensors to reduce the sensor-to-shooter (S2S) timelines through target nominations and fuse the common intelligence picture’. Palantir software is also currently being used by Israel and by Ukraine. 
• UK: Government insists it is acting ‘responsibly’ on military AI: Computer Weekly reports that the UK government has insisted that ‘it is already acting “responsibly” in the development of lethal autonomous weapons systems (LAWS) and military artificial intelligence (AI)’ following a warning from the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence in Weapons Systems to ‘proceed with caution’.

AI, algorithms and autonomy in the wider world

• US: Exclusive: U.S. Must Move ‘Decisively’ to Avert ‘Extinction-Level’ Threat From AI, Government-Commissioned Report Says: This piece by time covers a US government sanctioned report to ‘assess proliferation and security risk from weaponized and misaligned AI.’ The report shows that ‘that many AI safety workers inside cutting-edge labs are concerned about perverse incentives driving decision making by the executives who control their companies.’ It also recommends steps to ensure accountability and responsibility while handling such systems and technologies. 
• South Africa: Ethics must form bedrock of AI deployments: IBM: Hein Badenhorst, software leader at IBM South Africa has recently mentioned that he believes that ‘regulatory compliance when dealing with customer data is vital, and that if this data is compromised – as can happen – what really counts is how quickly a company responds to that breach’ His key messaging is that ‘AI ethics and data integrity, risk damaging their reputation for short-term gains.’
• International: AI Bias In the Spotlight On International Women’s Day: Marija Pejčinović Burić, the secretary general of the Council of Europe, said AI currently is on track to cause even more harm against women, including discrimination. ‘“Unless we learn how to harness the potential of AI to bridge inequalities–including gender inequality–and prevent discrimination, AI can and will become a force that entrenches, perpetuates and amplifies inequality,” Burić said.’ UNESCO also published an interesting study that looks into biases that occur in a number of areas such as ‘large language models (LLMs) and image-generation models.’
• International: It’s sue season as AI firms face lawsuits: Aaron Raj, writing for TECHWIRE Asia says ‘As AI capabilities improve, more authors, publishers and content creators are beginning to feel that the technology is merely copying their work or using it without their permission.’ Raj provides a snapshot of ‘some of the most recent AI lawsuits filed against AI firms.’
• International: OpenAI signs open letter to build AI responsibly just days after Elon Musk sued the company for putting profit ahead of people: This piece by Fortune reports that ‘OpenAI, Salesforce Inc. and other tech companies signed an open letter highlighting a “collective responsibility” to “maximize AI’s benefits and mitigate the risks” to society, in the tech industry’s latest effort to call for building artificial intelligence responsibly.’ 

Facial recognition, biometric identification, surveillance 

• US: Trump supporters target black voters with faked AI images: BBC Panorama investigation has revealed the use of AI generated images used by Trump supporters to shape ‘a very strategic narrative’ of widespread support for Trump among black voters. This raises issues of disinformation, and regulating the use of generative AI tools for election campaigning. 
• International: EFF Launches Surveillance Self-Defense Project to Combat Government Spying: BNN reports on the ‘Surveillance Self-Defense Project’ by Electronic Frontier Foundation which is an ‘online guide to defending yourself and your friends from surveillance by using secure technology and developing careful practices.’
• South Korea: South Korea privacy regulator to investigate Worldcoin’s biometrics handling: Biometric Update reports that ‘the Republic of Korea’s Personal Information Protection Committee (PIPC) has launched an investigation to follow up on allegations about the collection and processing of personal biometric data by Sam Altman’s digital ID and crypto side project potentially falling afoul of local laws.’
• US: Face-off Over Facial Recognition: This piece in Boston College Law Magazine reports on a panel discussion organised by the Rappaport Center for Law and Public Policy with eminent panelists on the issue of facial recognition technologies. The panel discussed necessary regulation for this emerging technology and the need for human decision making in verifying/ confirming algorithmic prompts. 

Regulation and enforcement

• EU: MEPs approve world’s first comprehensive AI law: This week, the European Parliament adopted the EU AI Act, which is the ‘world’s first and only set of binding requirements to mitigate AI risks.’ However, criticism of the Act, including on the watering down of key principles, has come from numerous organisations, with Amnesty International stating that ‘Even though adopting the world’s first rules on the development and deployment of AI technologies is a milestone, it is disappointing that the EU and its 27 member states chose to prioritize the interest of industry and law enforcement agencies over protecting people and their human rights.’ Further, the EU’s AI Act excludes AI systems designed, developed and used for military purposes, matters of national defence and national security from its regulatory scope.
• EU: AI instrument of the Council of Europe should be firmly based on human rights: European Commissioner for Human Rights Dunja Mijatović has stated that the Council of Europe’s forthcoming legally binding instrument on AI and human rights ‘should contain unambiguous obligations for states parties to reinforce the protection of human rights, democracy and the rule of law in the context of AI’, including ‘a positive obligation for states to create a legal and regulatory framework that effectively protects individuals from all human rights violations, whether these are committed by public or private sector actors.’

Research and reports

• International: Governments’ adoption of unchecked technologies in social protection systems undermines rights: Amnesty International released a briefing titled ‘Social protection in the Digital Age’ which ‘examines some of the key issues in the global trend of the introduction of digital technologies in social protection schemes and highlights the need for greater transparency and human rights safeguards.’
• AWS Legal Review Series – Introduction: Articles of War, The Lieber Institute for Law & Warfare, introduces its series titled ‘AWS Legal Review Series.’ The planned pieces include deliberations on issues of legal compliance and reviews of autonomous weapon systems, as well as transparency and non-legal considerations for legal reviews.