Military AI use condemned by human rights orgs

Digital rights group Access Now have published an open letter demanding AI is removed from military kill chains. Hundreds of activist and human rights organisations have signed up. They oppose the rapid penetration of AI technology into the military killing machine.

Access Now is an NGO which:

defends and extends the digital rights of people and communities at risk.

A kill chain is described as:

the military process of finding, fixing, tracking, targeting, engaging, and assessing a threat — abbreviated F2T2EA.

Their new joint statement, signed by hundreds of groups, expressed deep alarm at:

the rapid militarization of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.

Access Now warned:

AI systems embedded into military kill chains are accelerating the speed and scale of military assaults in a manner that creates significant new risks for accountability in conflict and risks facilitating violations of international criminal, human rights, and humanitarian law.

The UK state has become deeply entangled with AI firms, including the far-right AI corporation Palantir, in recent years.

The UK should divest from military AI

As the Canary has reported:

The UK military is currently locked into a multi-billion pound contract with Palantir. The statement makes no mention of Palantir, despite the genocide-linked firm’s role being the source of most controversy.

The UK military, police, NHS and, allegedly, the Telegraph have started using Palantir technology. The firm maintains a permanent desk in southern Israel, and is deeply involved in Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as well as Trump’s paramilitary immigration operations, ICE, whose officers use the firm’s gear.

The firm’s founders are open about their far-right politics. Palantir’s vision was exposed as fascistic in a 22-tweet ‘manifesto’ posted on X.

Access Now called:

for tech companies and states to halt the provision of AI systems for use in the military kill chain and to take all steps to ensure that other AI systems they provide do not cause or contribute to violations of international humanitarian law (IHL) and international human rights law (IHRL).

The group said their call applied to all:

AI decision-support systems, including target generation systems, remote biometric surveillance, and multimodal AI models, including large language models (LLMs).

Adding that:

AI-accelerated warfare is rapidly becoming a means of rubber-stamping killing at speed and at scale, and currently no technical or procedural fixes can effectively prevent the lethal and devastating consequences that stem from the fundamental challenges it poses to international law.

Access Now is correct. AI is a new frontier of imperialist warfare and state repression. The UK and other states have wholeheartedly embraced AI in their military, security and even civilian infrastructure. The UK should pause this process. At best, as the UK commons technology committee has argued in the case of Palantir, it should be divested from.

Featured image via Getty/Sean Gallup