20260920 Automatische Kriege

20.09.2026 Automatische Kriege

Oops, We Almost Started a War by Accident

A war between China and the U.S. was nearly sparked by a U.S. Navy attack on a Chinese cargo ship en route to Iran. An AI chatbot used by an “analyst” had misidentified the ship’s cargo. The report, generated with the help of AI, claimed that the Chinese ship was carrying components for nuclear weapons. U.S. Air Force planes had already been in the air to seize the ship.

CNN claims that the AI bot had mixed publicly available information with intelligence data, leading to a “misjudgment.” We can count ourselves lucky that humans noticed the AI’s error in time. Many victims of Israeli attacks — which were planned with the help of AI and carried out in violation of the Hague Convention on Land Warfare without consideration of “collateral damage” — were not so lucky.

Given the warnings about the rapid development of AI, this incident is further evidence that humanity should proceed with caution not only when it comes to the automation of warfare ...

Translated with DeepL.com (free version)