MOSCOW, February 11. /TASS/. American IT companies are abandoning the principle of not using artificial intelligence for weapons development and beginning to work for the US military, program director of the Academy of Political Sciences, senior researcher at the Institute of Latin America of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Stepanov, said in a column he contributed to TASS.
"Alphabet, Google’s parent company, is renouncing its previous principle of not developing products that may harm life and health. In practice, we can say that now the entire US technology cluster, the entire IT industry, is actively involved in contracts not only from the Pentagon, but also from the entire American military bloc," the military expert said.
Artificial intelligence algorithms are capable of adapting to any range of tasks, including military ones. A similar trend of military-civilian integration has occurred before, but now, Stepanov believes, it is actively supported by newly elected President Donald Trump. His aggressive diplomacy, the policy of putting pressure on both his opponents and allies, speaks of his willingness to use all means.
The expert said that Google, as the main player and generator of products used by almost every smartphone owner on the planet, creates new possibilities for collecting targeted information, including creating lists of key objects of critical information, civil, logistics, and energy infrastructure.
Stepanov explained that all these possibilities are provided by large data collection, identification of communication channels, and access to closed network circuits.
The expert concluded that Google and other US technology companies are faced with a choice: either they work for the military and political interests of the Trump administration, or lose access to government funding.