04-02-2025
- Science
- Wall Street Journal
Can We Trust AI to Prevent the Start of World War III?
In his column 'It's Time for AI to Come Home' (Business World, Feb. 1), Holman W. Jenkins Jr. writes: 'Supersmart weapons are coming and will be able to recognize and neutralize threats before a human can get in the loop.'
In September 1983, Oko, the Soviets' early-warning missile-detection system, identified five incoming American missiles. Reasoning that if the U.S. had meant to attack they would have done so with a more significant strike, officer Stanislav Petrov correctly judged it to be a false alarm, thus avoiding major retaliation. I wonder if artificial intelligence would have reasoned the same way.
