The world’s militaries are locked in an arms race to develop the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in warfare. They’ve been at it for more than a decade—despite calls from civil society and AI experts to ban its use in military operations, given the devastation that inaccurate AI targeting can cause.
In Gaza, AI has helped accelerate the death toll to more than 72,000 people. In Iran, a U.S. airstrike on the first day of the war killed between 175 and 180 people, mostly girls between the ages of seven and twelve. The strike was said to be AI-assisted, with outdated intelligence data and human error playing pivotal roles.
The Pentagon is ignoring such red flags over the use of AI to identify targets, direct drones, and analyze battlefields. In July, the U.S. military tested an AI-powered drone controlled entirely by its own onboard software, with no human pilot or remote operator involved.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has called for new rules and restrictions seeking to reduce the harm that this emerging technology can cause. Concerns around AI’s growing role in war have also spurred resistance efforts from tech workers, policymakers, and other human rights organizations, including the group I work for, MPower Change, which successfully organized with Microsoft workers to pressure the company into terminating its contract with an Israeli military intelligence unit surveilling Palestinians.
But we need to do a lot more, because the use of AI in war is the most harmful use of this technology. Heidy Khlaaf, chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, a New York-based nonprofit that produces policy recommendations, has argued, as the Washington Post put it in a 2024 article, that “AI systems have built-in inaccuracies that make them inappropriate for a life-and-death context such as war.” In late July, the institute and the transparency watchdog Airwars released “Anatomy of a Kill Chain”—a powerful visualization of how “cascading errors” in data and AI analysis can wrongfully bring death and destruction to large numbers of civilians.
The Washington Post investigation into Israel’s use of AI revealed how the military dangerously relaxed its oversight of AI use when bombing Gaza. Its normal rules mandated two pieces of human intelligence to validate, but at the outset of the war, the rule was dropped to require only one. And, astonishingly, at times the only corroboration required was that the target be male.
The American public is broadly in agreement about opposing the use of AI in war. According to polling last spring by Public Citizen, three-quarters of respondents feel that AI technology isn’t reliable enough to be trusted with life-or-death military decisions. Only 21 percent of Americans support developing and deploying AI-controlled weapons.
More than 200 organizations and individuals—from human and digital rights groups to tech workers—are now calling on governments and companies to halt the use of AI systems in the military “kill chain.” MPower Change’s recently launched No AI for War campaign compiles actions that everyday people can take to advocate for the ethical use of AI technologies, like petitioning Congress to ban autonomous weapons and pressuring big tech companies to end defense contracts that supply cloud computing and predictive AI.
We’re at a critical moment, when the actions being taken by tech companies and governments may decide the fate of humanity. Governments must end the use of AI in military targeting and create meaningful oversight of its other military uses. Companies must stop selling AI technologies and services for use in military targeting, autonomous weapons systems, and mass surveillance. Apple’s cancellation of a contract tied to the Pentagon’s Project Maven is a step in the right direction.
We must do what we can collectively to stop the wars causing incalculable harm to humans and the health of our planet. When wars are fought despite our best efforts, we can still insist they be waged as morally as possible by ensuring the responsible use of AI technology—or, ideally, avoiding its use entirely.
This column was produced for Progressive Perspectives, a project of The Progressive magazine, and distributed by Tribune News Service.