Deborah Cheverton
Civil regulation of artificial intelligence (AI) is hugely complex and evolving quickly, with even otherwise well-aligned countries taking significantly different approaches. At first glance, little in the content of these regulations is directly applicable to the defense and national security community. The most wide-ranging and robust regulatory frameworks have specific carve-outs that exclude military and related use cases. And while governments are not blind to the need for regulations on AI used in national security and defense, these are largely detached from the wider civil AI regulation debate. However, when potential second-order or unintended consequences on defense from civil AI regulation are considered, it becomes clear that the defense and security community cannot afford to think itself special. Carve-out boundaries can, at best, be porous when the technology is inherently dual use in nature. This paper identifies three broad areas in which this porosity might have a negative impact, including market-shaping civil regulation that could affect the tools available to the defense and national security community; judicial interpretation of civil regulations that could impact the defense and national security community’s license to operate; and regulations that could add additional cost or risk to developing and deploying AI systems for defense and national security.
This paper employs these areas as lenses through which to assess civil regulatory frameworks for AI to identify which initiatives should concern the defense and national security community. These areas are grouped by the level of resources and attention that should be applied while the civil regulatory landscape continues to develop. Private-sector AI firms with dual-use products, industry groups, government offices with national security responsibility for AI, and legislative staff should use this paper as a roadmap to understand the impact of civil AI regulation on their equities and plan to inject their perspectives into the debate.
No comments:
Post a Comment