L 300/14
EN
Official Journal of the European Union
21.11.2022
ANNEX
PROJECT DOCUMENT
Promoting Responsible Innovation in AI for Peace and Security
1.
BACKGROUND
Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI) have unlocked new possibilities to support and sustain peace and security, for instance, through technological improvements in areas such as conflict early warning, and arms and export control verification.
On the other hand, these advances have enabled new means to generate—or aggravate—tensions, conflicts and insecurity between and within states.
The risks posed by certain applications of AI, such as lethal autonomous weapons systems, have emerged as a major issue of concern for the arms control community.
One risk pathway that deserves greater attention, and which current arms control and diplomatic efforts may be insufficient in responding to, is the diversion and misuse of civilian AI research and innovation by irresponsible actors, including malicious non-state actors, such as the misuse of Generative Adversarial Networks (GAN) to produce ‘deepfakes’ for disinformation campaigns.
AI is an enabling technology with great general-use potential.
AI research and innovation that are developed for civilian applications could be (relatively easily) accessed and repurposed by certain actors for harmful or disruptive uses that could have implications for international peace and security.
The diversion and misuse of civilian technology are not new phenomena nor are they unique to AI.
In the related field of robotics, this was recently exemplified by the weaponization and use of recreational drones by Daesh/ISIS in Syria.
But in the case of AI, the problem is complicated by multiple factors: the intangible and fast-changing nature of AI algorithms and data, which makes the transfer/proliferation of these difficult to control; the leading role of the private sector in the research, development and innovation ecosystem, and its consequent need to protect proprietary algorithms; and the global availability of the human expertise and material resources capable of repurposing AI technologies.
Meanwhile, those working in AI in the civilian sector remain too often unaware of the potential implications that the diversion and misuse of their work could have for international peace and security or are hesitant to take part in the existing discussions on AI risks in arms control and non-proliferation circles.
There is a need to support greater engagement of the civilian AI community in understanding and mitigating the peace and security risks associated with the diversion and misuse of civilian AI technology by irresponsible actors.
For the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) and the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs (UNODA), this could be achieved through greater promotion of responsible innovation in the global civilian AI community.
Past work by SIPRI and UNODA has shown that responsible innovation, as a self-governance mechanism, could provide the global civilian AI community with practical tools and methods to identify as well as help prevent and mitigate the risks that the diversion and misuse of civilian AI research and innovation could pose to peace and security.
SIPRI’s and UNODA’s work also identified methodologies and several ongoing civilian-focused initiatives on responsible AI that could be built on to sensitize the civilian AI community to arms control and non-proliferation issues, expert debates and state positions on responsible development, diffusion, and use of AI, as well as lessons to be learned from defence sector responsibility work.
(1) Critically, this prior work has clearly identified engagement with Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) students, who are still engaging with AI in an educational format, as central to any effective responsible innovation effort.
2.
OBJECTIVES
These projects aim to support greater engagement of the civilian AI community in mitigating the risks that the diversion and misuse of civilian AI research and innovation by irresponsible actors may pose to international peace and security.
They aim to do so by, firstly, generating greater understanding of how decisions in the development and diffusion of AI research and innovation can impact the risks of diversion and misuse, and in turn generate risk or opportunities for peace and security, and secondly, by promoting responsible innovation processes, methods and tools which can help ensure the peaceful application of civilian innovations and the responsible dissemination of AI knowledge.
To this end, they support capacity-building, research and engagement activities that will i) enhance the capacity within the global civilian AI community to include and address the peace and security risks presented by the diversion and misuse of civilian AI by irresponsible actors through responsible innovation processes; and ii) strengthen the connection between risk mitigation (1) Methodologies include for instance the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recommended practices for assessing the impact of autonomous and intelligent systems on human well-being (IEEE Std 7010-2020), The High-Level Expert Group on Artificial Intelligence’ Assessment list for Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (ALTAI).
Initiatives include: The IEEE The global initiative on ethics for autonomous and intelligent systems; the Partnership on AI; the Global Partnership on AI.