Kissinger, artificial intelligence, and the future of international relations

The subject of artificial intelligence has become one of the central topics in various fields, including politics and international relations, not only for the role that it can play for systems, whether in the positive aspect related to management or as well as the negative aspect related to control and control.

Artificial Intelligence

It is also a weapon that can be employed in international relations, based on several aspects, one of which is that the economy of artificial intelligence is the focus of competition between the major countries in the world, and artificial intelligence also provides weapons belonging to various types of wars that can be employed by developed countries, and from this point hundreds of books have been written about The relationship of artificial intelligence to politics and democracy on the one hand, as well as the relationship of artificial intelligence to the interactions of international relations on the other hand.

Despite the abundance of books that were produced on the subject, they lacked the involvement of the masters and great classical theorists in international relations, especially the theorists of realism, whether in its classical or new version. He directed a joint book, "The Age of Artificial Intelligence: The Future of Humanity," released November 2021 with Dean of Schwarzman College at MIT, Daniel P. Huttenlocher and former CEO of Google, Eric Schmidt. The authors share their common realization that humanity stands on the brink of a moment of paramount importance in which the technologist is highly present.

The growing power of artificial intelligence can be used for general purposes to serve both civil and military purposes that are beneficial to democracy and harmful to it at the same time. What motivates the topics of discussion in international relations, but on the contrary, Kissinger’s involvement through this book in the subject of artificial intelligence, is due to the fact that technology today has become a tangible force, and a weapon that should not only be owned but rather monopolized and prevented competitors from excelling in it, similar to nuclear weapons. Which plunged the world into a cold war, and my reference here to the Cold War is due to Kissinger being one of the architects of this war because he realized the danger of nuclear weapons in international relations, and today, when he writes about artificial intelligence and its impact on international relations, he carries with him the legacy of the Cold War with his awareness of new variables , fkissingerThe author of the book "On China" knows that China today is not the Soviet Union, and how not, and he is one of the few who have met all the leaders of People's China since Mao's time.

Kissinger and the rest of the book's authors are today greatly aware of the challenge that technology in general, and artificial intelligence in particular, poses to concepts rooted through centuries such as national security and state sovereignty. In other words, artificial intelligence has become a protective challenge for all of humanity.

Military technologies such as cyber weapons have recently multiplied and become more destructive, while determining the nature and pace of their use strategies has become difficult to control. Like a nuclear bomb, AI-enhanced electronic weapons can lead to a system “rapid collapse.” In this regard, the authors argue that AI has the potential to raise the potential for conventional, nuclear, and electronic capabilities in ways that make security relationships between competitors more difficult to handle or predict. .

Although Kissinger is one of the United States' experts on China, and Schmidt chaired the recent US National Security Committee report on artificial intelligence that warned of China's growing technological power, the book does not provide as insight into Beijing's ambitions as the reader might expect. , in contrast to what, for example, Ke Fu Lee did in his book “AI superpowers”, in which he explained why China is strong in this field and how it has developed its capabilities in it.

On the other hand, the authors of the book, including Kissinger, urge the United States and China to talk to each other directly and regularly about their electronic principles and lines, as well as to build a system that controls this field between them, and here I remind the reader of the Cold War and the role of Kissinger in enacting its laws with the Soviet Union, and Kissinger was accompanied by the rest The authors feel that humanity has entered a new cold war, one of its weapons is artificial intelligence, so this practice must be controlled and legalized around it. The reason for this question is the fact that in the era of the “first” Cold War, the state was the sole and monopolistic actor of the violence of the “nuclear bomb.”

What credits the book, especially Kissinger, is its involvement in the question of artificial intelligence; This engagement is enough to redirect the compass of academics who are preoccupied with the theory of realism in their interaction with political phenomena to give more attention to the value of technology and its impact on the political scene. in the field of artificial intelligence. Do these challenges today require intense international cooperation between various countries, even the European Union, which is lagging behind in the field of artificial intelligence? Do we need the legal approach presented by the European Union as an alternative to confronting this expansion, or is the situation impervious this time, unlike the nuclear bomb, which, although we disagree with some of the policies adopted around it, we agree that the policy adopted around it has spared humanity from the destruction of its use?

I think that we in fact need another approach that carries different dimensions, through which technology companies must be dealt with on the basis that they are competitors to monopolize this technology, and their ambitions must be controlled. So far, its political outcomes, but we know that Trump, for example, reached the presidency with the help of Cambridge Analytica, which used Facebook information to influence voters, in another way, as long as the West did not address its internal problems with technology, it cannot confront China or impose rules on technology globally.(Osman Amkor)