The Age of A.I. and Our Human Future

by Henry Kissinger

The most revolutionary and unpredictable effect may occur at the point where AI and human intelligence encounter each other. Historically, countries planning for battle have been able to understand, if imperfectly, their adversaries’ doctrines, tactics, and strategic psychology. This has permitted the development of adversarial strategies and tactics as well as a symbolic language of demonstrative military actions, such as intercepting a jet nearing a border or sailing a vessel through a contested waterway. Yet where a military uses AI to plan or target—or even assist dynamically during a patrol or conflict—these familiar concepts and interactions may become newly strange because they will involve communication with, and interpretation of, an intelligence that is unfamiliar in its methods and tactics. Fundamentally, the shift to AI and AI-assisted weapons and defense systems involves a measure of reliance on—and, in extreme cases, delegation to—an intelligence of considerable analytic potential operating on a fundamentally different experiential paradigm. Such reliance will introduce unknown or poorly understood risks.