Seminar Abstract:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is becoming increasingly common in the international security domain. AI serves as an enabler that can help automate and streamline military tasks that traditionally required human intelligence. Despite the proliferation of AI-enabled systems, relatively little scholarly research has explored whether and how AI affects military decision-making. Instead, researchers have focused on the various applications of AI in the military domain, the effect of AI on the global balance of power, and the challenges that AI poses to alliance operations. Yet, the perceptions that policymakers have toward AI may affect their decisions on the use of force. Drawing from a set of original survey experiments fielded on a sample of U.S. national security practitioners, we find that AI use by both friendly and rival forces has a significant effect on elite decision-making during interstate crises.

Speaker Bio:

Erik Lin-Greenberg is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Erik’s research examines how emerging military technology affects conflict dynamics and the use of force. His work has appeared in a variety of academic and policy outlets including Security Studies, Journal of Peace Research, International Peacekeeping, Foreign Policy, and The Washington Post. Erik previously held fellowships at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation and the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House, and he received the 2020 American Political Science Association Merze Tate Prize for best dissertation in international relations, law, and politics. He completed his PhD at Columbia University and an MS and BS at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to graduate school, Erik was an active duty officer in the United States Air Force and continues to serve on the Joint Staff as a member of the Air Force Reserve.

This seminar was hosted by the Center for Global Security Research (CGSR) at LLNL. Learn more about CGSR at https://cgsr.llnl.gov.

LLNL-Video-786879

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