AI and modern warfare: Firsthand and secondhand experience

This will deal with how modern technology and artificial intelligence (AI) have shifted modern warfare and how it is experienced by the people. Despite the shift, the experience remains firsthand for civilians. This starts with the integration of modern technology and AI into modern warfare.

The rise of AI poses a threat to humanity since it lacks the capacity to deliberate on moral questions, and this threat comes with the risk of using AI in a harmful way. The question of good or bad has transformed from morality to warfare tactics. This means that this no longer concerns morality but the maximization of victory. Technology and AI are now a matter of achieving the means of victory, while disregarding their moral issues. Perhaps, morality and justice have no place in war, especially in the display of power.

The integration of modern technology and AI in warfare is a full-scale utilization of human action into technology-mediated execution. This is the distinctive feature of the recent war compared to previous wars.

In war, modern technologies and AI have become a secondary action. Instead of the previous face-off of a gruesome exchange of bullets, the distance in war has grown since it is a matter of artillery capacity. The targets are not just the soldiers, who wield their guns at enemy soldiers; it is now a technological warfare between assault and interception between missiles and drones, where explosions are physically seen and experienced. This secondary action takes place when the execution of the elimination of the target is done through modern warfare technology and AI assistance.

Humans, soldiers in command, first execute a series of coded actions that are transmitted to deploy an offense or defense. Technology and AI execute the second action based on programs. This has transitioned the war into a secondhand experience. Because of technology and AI, war is witnessed in experience in monitors behind closed doors, not in actual combat. The secondhand experience of war in soldiers is like a simulation with controllers and screens. They are no longer threatened by bullets or hunger. The absence of actual physical pain makes war a secondhand experience for the soldiers who use modern technology and AI.

But the casualties of war remain a firsthand experience. The war between soldiers may have grown in distance and transitioned into a secondhand experience, but civilians still directly experience the whole war. The suffering and deaths of the people are not experienced in any other way but as an experience for themselves. The blood is spilled, and hunger and anxiety become their everyday experience. There is no distance, but a direct hit to them. It is a firsthand experience of the deprivation of their freedom and an existential decision to a good life.

Today, modern technological warfare and AI assume actual combat between soldiers and their guns. Even though war has transformed into a secondhand experience for the soldiers, civilian suffering is ultimately firsthand. No matter how modern warfare has developed through several technological innovations, the totality of suffering of the people remains a raw experience. Soldiers may no longer feel the pain of bullets and hunger, but people experience war physically. The experience of actual physical pain in war distinguishes the experiences of both soldiers and civilians. Thus, a secondhand and firsthand experience in war.