British media: The use of AI in warfare by the U.S. is a "dangerous turning point"

Reference News Network, March 6 report The British "Guardian" website published a report on March 3, titled "Trump is Waging War with AI—This is a Dangerous Turning Point," with the content summarized as follows:

AI can do many things. It can help you organize your shopping list, improve your work efficiency, and also help the government operate more effectively.

However, there is currently little discussion about the inherent risks of the militarization of AI, which is precisely the issue we need to raise our voices about now. Reports indicate that in the past three months, the Trump administration in the United States has used AI twice to promote regime change.

First, Anthropic's "Claude" model was reportedly used to plan and execute the operation to capture Venezuelan President Maduro from his residence. Recently, we learned that AI tools were again used for intelligence analysis, assisting in a large-scale missile strike against Iran that caused significant destruction.

The importance of these two events cannot be overstated. AI has been used in the planning and execution of military operations, resulting in an unknown number of casualties and disrupting the situation in the Middle East.

If you feel uneasy about this, you are not alone. Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei had a public and heated argument with the U.S. president because Amodei refused to relax two "red lines" for the "Claude" model: it should not be used for large-scale domestic surveillance, nor for creating fully autonomous weapons.

In the past, questions such as "Who should control AI? What happens if it is used for military purposes?" were merely abstract discussions held in academic seminars. However, when Maduro was captured by special forces in January and Iran began to suffer bombings in February (clearly aided by AI), the situation changed.

The fundamental principle of armed conflict is: you can possess powerful deterrent weapons, but you must never use them. What is concerning is that early signs of war games indicate that AI decision-makers may be impulsive in the use of nuclear weapons.

When military historians look back at everything that has happened in the past few months, it is not hard to imagine they will consider the use of AI in this manner akin to the nuclear weapons dropped on Japan: marking a clear watershed moment of "before" and an uncertain "after."

The international community now needs to work to pull Trump back from the edge of the cliff. Allies should pressure the Trump administration not only to use AI responsibly in the military domain but also to accept binding restrictions. These restrictions should include international commitments, transparent procurement standards, and effective oversight mechanisms. Other countries should also comply, rather than viewing ethical issues as obstacles to action. Because if the world's most powerful military normalizes the use of consumer-grade AI models for regime change operations, we will have fully entered the dangerous mirrored world of AI, a new and overall more perilous world. (Translated by Wang Diqing)