By Tobias T. Gibson, Department of Political Science, Westminster College
Judge James E. Baker, Director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law and Professor of Law at Syracuse Law School, begins THE CENTAUR’S DILEMMA with two truisms. The first is that artificial intelligence (AI) is widespread and will only become more ubiquitous. The second is that law is rarely, and perhaps never, in line with the technology that it is supposed to govern.
As described by Baker, the approaching dilemma is that of decision making, especially in the realm of national security, that will combine human and machine—like the half human, half horse centaur of mythology. Yet, while this is imminent, and in some ways a current issue—think of your reliance on the Waze app—Baker’s stated goal of this book is to allow generalists, including policymakers, to debate and design a legal framework. The time is now because allowing time for debate, including a wide variety of stakeholders, will allow lawmakers “to make informed, purposeful, and accountable decisions about the security use of governance of AI” (pp. 5-6).
The first four chapters of the book establish the problems and provocations of artificial intelligence in a national security setting. To be sure, uses and issues related to AI will certainly arise in areas of policy spaces related to traditional national security spheres, such as military and intelligence. Fighter pilots, autonomous vehicles—whether air based “drones,” or increasingly land and water-based ones—and international surveillance tools and data collection all will be enhanced by cooperative work between human and AI. Baker’s work is focused on establishing a protocol of law and policy that will not allow the cooption of decision making by the coming, and many would argue present, AI revolution.
However, he also adds that the use of AI in everyday items, the so-called Internet of things, also needs to be governed to prevent excessive action on the part of the government and corporations that build smart cars, smart toasters, smart coffee makers, smart refrigerators, and smart phones. As Baker notes, a series of recent Supreme Court cases, discussed below, have led to bright lines in the ways that collected data is used by law enforcement. However, there is much to discern and develop, as AI technology advances beyond Facebook and Amazon algorithms and becomes far more ubiquitous.
That said, however, some of the most directly applicable and, quite frankly, most developed portions of the proposed framework are found in case law, much of which is seminal …