The Hottest Concept Ever.

It's not what you've been told.

Programming Note: News Items will be off the grid beginning Thursday, 22 December 2022. It returns Monday, 2 January 2023.

1. Henry Kissinger:

As the world’s leaders strive to end the war (in Ukraine) in which two nuclear powers contest a conventionally armed country, they should also reflect on the impact on this conflict and on long-term strategy of incipient high–technology and artificial intelligence. Autonomous weapons already exist, capable of defining, assessing and targeting their own perceived threats and thus in a position to start their own war.

Once the line into this realm is crossed and hi-tech becomes standard weaponry – and computers become the principal executors of strategy – the world will find itself in a condition for which as yet it has no established concept. How can leaders exercise control when computers prescribe strategic instructions on a scale and in a manner that inherently limits and threatens human input? How can civilization be preserved amid such a maelstrom of conflicting information, perceptions and destructive capabilities?

No theory for this encroaching world yet exists, and consultative efforts on this subject have yet to evolve – perhaps because meaningful negotiations might disclose new discoveries, and that disclosure itself constitutes a risk for the future. Overcoming the disjunction between advanced technology and the concept of strategies for controlling it, or even understanding its full implications, is as important an issue today as climate change, and it requires leaders with a command of both technology and history. (Sources: theatlantic.com, spectator.co.uk)

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