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How Might Artificial Intelligence Affect the Risk of Nuclear War? | RAND
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This RAND Perspective examines how AI advances could destabilize nuclear deterrence by 2040, covering AI-enabled detection, tracking, targeting, and autonomous escalation advisory roles — directly relevant to AI safety concerns about autonomous systems in high-stakes military contexts.
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Importance: 72/100policy briefanalysis
Summary
RAND researchers synthesized expert workshops to assess how AI could affect nuclear strategic stability through 2040. The report identifies two key risk areas: AI-enhanced detection/tracking/targeting capabilities and AI as an autonomous adviser in nuclear escalation decisions. It concludes that even modest AI progress could exacerbate nuclear instability.
Key Points
- •AI advances could undermine the strategic balances that have prevented nuclear war since 1945, even with only modest technical progress by 2040.
- •AI-enabled detection, tracking, and targeting systems could erode second-strike capabilities, destabilizing mutual deterrence.
- •AI used as a 'trusted adviser' in escalation decisions raises concerns about autonomous or semi-autonomous nuclear command and control.
- •Adversarial perceptions of AI capabilities may be as destabilizing as actual capabilities, creating dangerous misunderstandings.
- •The report calls for proactive understanding and governance to prevent AI from inadvertently increasing nuclear war risk.
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Expert Insights
PE-296
How Might Artificial Intelligence Affect the Risk of Nuclear War?
Edward Geist, Andrew J. Lohn
Expert InsightsPublished Apr 24, 2018
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Advances in artificial intelligence (AI) are enabling previously infeasible capabilities, potentially destabilizing the delicate balances that have forestalled nuclear war since 1945. Will these developments upset the nuclear strategic balance, and, if so, for better or for worse? To start to address this question, RAND researchers held a series of workshops that were attended by prominent experts on AI and nuclear security. The workshops examined the impact of advanced computing on nuclear security through 2040. The culmination of those workshops, this Perspective — one of a series that examines critical security challenges in 2040 — places the intersection of AI and nuclear war in histori
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