When a coupon suddenly appears on your phone as you approach a store, you might find it convenient and even helpful. But the same AI systems that know where you are and try to influence your purchases can be used to infer what you fear, what you trust and which stories you are likely to believe. AI-fueled marketing algorithms are becoming increasingly good at influencing human behavior.
That raises concern about what various governments might do with these tools to influence citizens’ views about warfare. A clear-eyed look at how administrations are exploiting these systems may help people and their nations navigate an uncertain future.
I am a security researcher who studies ways to explore and characterize the risk technology poses to individuals and society. The rise of AI-mediated influence has raised questions about the erosion of people’s capacity to exercise free will and, by extension, society’s ability to distinguish a just war from an unjust war.
AI-powered marketing
The integration of AI with location-based services is pushing the marketing frontier. Location-based services use geographic data from indoor sensors, cellphone towers and satellites to promote goods and services that are tailored to your location, a capability called geofencing.
When marketing firms couple massive amounts of data about individuals’ behaviors – including information that people voluntarily or unknowingly share through mobile device applications – the firms can group, or segment, potential customers based on what they like, what they do and what they say.
Once an AI-powered marketing system knows where a user is and can make an informed guess about that person’s likes and dislikes, it can design targeted coupons and advertisements to influence the behavior of each person in a group, and possibly the group as a whole. This combination of AI with geofencing and segmentation makes hyperpersonalized marketing content possible at an unprecedented scale.
Real-time propaganda
What might this advance have to do with warfare? The use of psychology to win battles or obviate the need for war is as old as armed conflict itself. Sun Tzu, the Chinese military general and philosopher who died in 496 B.C., wrote: “Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.”
From Sun Tzu’s era until today, skilled practitioners of military strategy have sought to reduce the risk in fighting through reflexive control: getting opponents to willingly perform actions that are best for the strategist’s empire or nation.
Today’s strategists increasingly rely on paid social media advertisements, influencers, AI-generated content and even fake social media accounts to sway popular opinion toward their goals. This power, and controversy surrounding it, has been implicated in recent national…
