An International Research Seminar which was held on June 14, 2019, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation in Moscow, on the Initiative of the European – Russian Communication Management Network, has accepted a Final Document titled: “Artificial Intelligence and Challenges to International Psychological Security.”
The seminar which was hosted by the Institute of International Contemporary Studies of the Diplomatic Academy also resolved to establish a working group with a purpose of realizing the Final Document’s provisions.
Below is the text of the Final Document:
The capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies are growing at an unprecedented rate. These technologies can be used in many areas for public benefit, ranging from machine translations to medical diagnostics. The next few years and decades will only see an acceleration of this growth, and global investment in AI will reach trillions of dollars. Researchers in various countries and leading international organizations are paying a lot of attention to these positive aspects of using AI.
However, much less research has looked into the malicious use of artificial intelligence (MUAI), but it deserves special attention due to its possible global catastrophic effects. The research that has been done has touched only on the political, digital, military, and physical aspects of MUAI, but even this is insufficient. MUAI has a great dangerous potential to target and psychologically destabilize international relations.
We define international psychological security (IPS) as the protection of the system of international relations from any negative information and psychological influences associated with various tangible and intangible factors of international development.
A major threat to international security in general, and to IPS in particular, comes from various state and non-state actors’ different targeted efforts, whose aim is to achieve a partial/complete, local/global, short-term/long-term, and latent/open destabilization of the international situation in order to gain competitive advantages. These actors even achieve these aims through physically eliminating the enemy.
Systems of psychological warfare from both state and large non-state actors have formed a special group of factors. These actors are aimed to strengthen, weaken and/or modify the objective influencing factors on the target groups’ consciousness both for social and protective purposes and for selfish anti-social interests, which weakens the IPS.
International actors engaging in hybrid warfare are exerting negative material (economic, political, military), direct and indirect impacts on the enemy’s public consciousness and, often, on themselves, their allies, and neutral actors as well.
MUAI will greatly increase IPS’s vulnerability
