![]() After a US military plane dropped a precision-guided munition on a house in Baiji, Iraq, in 2006, killing the family that lived there, legal scholar Dakota S. But what will these changes mean when something goes wrong? And what can governments and militaries do to ensure that such errors do not result in unintended escalation?Ī similar dynamic has already played out with precision-guided munitions, whose greater accuracy has raised expectations so much that errors are harder to accept when they occur. After all, the advantages of AI are to automate-to reduce inefficiencies and require less human oversight. ![]() If AI caused the accident, human error can’t be blamed.Ĭompared to other military accidents, an accident involving AI could be particularly risky it could be difficult to determine whether an incident was deliberate or not, in other words, to determine if it was even an accident. But if an AI is making critical military decisions, governments could find it harder to smooth tensions after an accident like the EP-3 incident and to move on. But as militaries invest in new technologies and move into an era when machines, not generals or pilots, take on more decision-making, a new risk-that accidents won’t be resolved so neatly in the future-has emerged.įrom surveillance systems to tank turrets to “ glass battlefields” that show three-dimensional depictions of conflict areas, militaries are racing to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI) into weapons and other systems. The EP-3 crew and plane were eventually returned. Relations stabilize and both sides move on. They’re an accepted aspect of international politics, and as happened in the spy plane incident, political and military leaders often cite human error as a cause. Ultimately, both the Chinese government and the American government blamed the in-air actions of each other’s pilots as the cause of the accident. The US spy plane, meanwhile, limped toward Hainan Island, its crew desperately trying to destroy sensitive materials before landing the crippled craft on a Chinese air strip. ![]() The collision destroyed the Chinese plane and sent its pilot plummeting to the ocean below. In April, 2001, a US EP-3 turboprop on a routine surveillance flight in the South China Sea collided with a Chinese fighter jet that had been aggressively tailing the mission.
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