The Security and Military Implications of Neurotechnology and Artificial Intelligence

This chapter aims at taking stock of technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and neurotechnology and looks at the security and military implications of these technologies in light of their current capabilities. AI and neurotechnology hold a great transformative potential due to their ability to read, modify, simulate and amplify human cognition in a variety of domains and in response to a variety of cognitive and analytical tasks. Furthermore, both technologies are rapidly proliferating outside traditional supervised settings (e.g. the clinics and academic research) onto multiple and unsupervised domains, a phenomenon that can be labelled “horizontal proliferation”. Among these domains, their co-optation into the military sector and subsequent weaponization are of particular concern from an international security perspective. For each technological category, five security-relevant issues are discussed: data bias and accountability, manipulation, social control, weaponization and democratization of access. We argue that, in light of their disruptive potential and rapid proliferation, both neurotechnology and artificial intelligence urge global governance responses that deal with their accessibility, their proliferation, their dual-use nature including how easily these technologies can be repurposed and obviously the ethics and values that should accompany the development and use of these technologies. These responses should be inclusive and comprise all the different stakeholders (governments, private sector, scientific community, civil society and tech companies) and be very versatile as these technologies and applications evolve rapidly.