Artificial Intelligence, Forward‐Looking Governance and the Future of Security

Abstract

Over the last years, AI applications have come to play a role in many security-related fields. In this paper, we show that scholars who want to study AI's link to power and security should widen their perspective to include conceptual approaches from science and technology studies (STS). This way, scholars can pay attention to critical dynamics, processes, practices, and non-traditional actors in AI politics and governance. We introduce two STS-inspired conceptsthe micro-politics of design and development and co-productionand show how the study of AI and security could benefit from them. In the final section, we turn to the study of AI in the context of Switzerland to underscore what aspects the two previously introduced concepts help to highlight that remain invisible for traditional approaches.

Catching up with AI: Pushing toward a cohesive governance framework

“…Furthermore, applications for utilizing AI offer opportunities to innovate in almost every aspect of human life (Gehl Sampath, 2021). Examples include autonomous transportation (Eyert et al, 2022), health‐care systems (Morley et al, 2022), international relationships (Garcia, 2018), government systems (Ingrams et al, 2021), information security, military applications (Fischer & Wenger, 2021), and private enterprise (Greiman, 2019). AI can augment human cognitive capabilities, such as adequately distributing social assistance services to an entire nation (Erman & Furendal, 2022) and improving humanitarian (van den Homberg et al, 2020), economic (Beaumier & Kalomeni, 2021), legal (Gellers, 2021), and other policies (Cihon et al, 2020).…”

“…Moreover, fears about AI gone wrong continue to percolate popular discourse. There are concerns about the misuse of AI for warfare (Dauvergne, 2022; Fischer & Wenger, 2021; Greiman, 2019), cyberattacks (Greiman, 2019), privacy violations (Mohamed et al, 2012), and disruption of peace and security (Garcia, 2018). Transparency is paramount to building trust among the public, which is at once open to the promise of AI and wary of its potential misuse (Gehl Sampath, 2021).…”

Cyber Security Politics

“…State actors see themselves increasingly caught in a global race for AI or quantum dominance Bonfanti 2022). From the perspective of science and technology studies, such threat narratives are co-constituted by the micro-politics of design decisions in competitive global markets and the macropolitics of great powers that act strategically in a competitive international system (Fischer and Wenger 2021).…”

Conclusion

“…State actors see themselves increasingly caught in a global race for AI or quantum dominance (Lindsay 2022;Bonfanti 2022). From the perspective of science and technology studies, such threat narratives are co-constituted by the micro-politics of design decisions in competitive global markets and the macropolitics of great powers that act strategically in a competitive international system (Fischer and Wenger 2021).…”