Machines Don't Blink

The Perils of Military Brinkmanship in the Age of AI

- By Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt and Daniel Huttenlocher

In ways large and small, artificial intelligence (AI) has become ubiquitous. Search engines, maps and social media are analyzing our histories to make predictions and tailor relevant responses. Text and email applications, which know the words and phrases we use most often, are trying to complete our sentences. AI programs like AlphaGo and AlphaZero are winning games—in their cases, Go and chess— by playing themselves and, in so doing, developing their own not-quite-human concepts of the games. At MIT, an AI program discovered a new antibiotic by identifying patterns in data that humans did not—or possibly never could. Struck by these and other breakthroughs, the all-star team of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Schmidt Futures co-founder and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and MIT Schwarzman College of Computing Dean Daniel Huttenlocher have come together to analyze AI—how it evolved; where it is now; and where, eventually, it will take us. In this excerpt from their book, the age of ai: and our human future (Little, Brown & Company) they consider the transformations AI will impose on the planning, preparation and conduct of war. They conclude that humans remain essential to the equation.