Ahead of a summit between China's Xi Jinping and US President Joe Biden, there had been suggestions that the two men would agree to ban lethal autonomous weapons.
The meeting appeared to produce no such accord, but experts say it's a vital topic that is already altering armed conflict — and switching up the competition for global supremacy.
Observers say Beijing is massively investing in AI, to the point where it may soon be able to change the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific, and perhaps beyond.
And that has profound implications for a world order that has long been dominated by the United States.
«This is not about the anxiety of no longer being the dominant power in the world; it is about the risks of living in a world in which the Chinese Communist Party becomes the dominant power,» said a report by a panel of experts led by former Google president Eric Schmidt.
Here are some of the possible applications of AI in the art of warfare.
Autonomous weapons
Robots, drones, torpedoes… all kinds of weapons can be transformed into autonomous systems, thanks to sophisticated sensors governed by AI algorithms that allow a computer to «see».
Autonomy does not mean that a weapon might «wake up in the morning and decide to go and start a war,» said Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at the University of California at Berkeley.
«It's that they have the capability of locating, selecting and attacking human targets, or targets