SIPRI expert contributes to military AI toolkit

On 4 September, the project 'AutoPractices', hosted by the Centre for War Studies at the University of Southern Denmark in collaboration with SIPRI, launched a report on military artificial intelligence (AI). 'Map of Practices' is the first step towards developing a cutting-edge toolkit to sustain and strengthen human agency and accountability in AI technologies.

Dr Alexander Blanchard, Senior Researcher in the SIPRI Governance of AI Programme, contributed significantly to the project, which aims to initiate a bottom-up process of social innovation to govern AI technologies in military systems. There are currently no international legally binding regulations in this area, and top-down, state-led approaches to global governance continue to face challenges.

The map draws on surveys, interviews and workshops with diverse stakeholders to identify eight key themes of practice, ranging from ensuring humans retain decision-making authority and intervention options to embedding continuous feedback, training, accountability, testing and risk assessment across the AI life cycle. By clustering these into technical, policy and procedural practices, the toolkit will highlight concrete ways to sustain and strengthen human agency in the design, deployment and oversight of AI-enabled military systems.

The toolkit will be published later in the year, and the 'AutoPractices' project is funded by the European Research Council.